America boasts of having the finest educational system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country; but it is necessary only to stand upon the threshold of the first Harvard house which I entered, to pass through its mean entry and climb up its uncouth staircase, to be assured that our educational system has not yet found its key-stone. It has all the necessary materials, but it is incomplete. At its base it is falling every day more and more into shape and symmetry, but towards the top it is still only a pile of pebbles and boulders, and no arch. We have Primary Schools, Grammar Schools, High Schools, in which, first, boys and girls are educated together, as it seems impossible not to believe that God meant them to be; in which, secondly, home life and school life come together, and correct each other; in which, thirdly, comfortable and comely arrangements throughout minister to self-respect. But the moment you rise as high as a college, nature is violated. First, boys go off by themselves to their own destruction; secondly, home influences withdrawn; and, thirdly,—at Harvard, which the only college I ever visited,—the thorough comeliness which is found in the lower grades of schools does not appeal. The separation of boys and girls in school is a subject which has much talked about, but has not yet come to its adequate discussion. But the achievements of the past are the surest guaranties of the future. When we remember that, sixty years ago, the lowest district public schools were open to boys only, and that since that time girls have flocked into every grade of school below a college, it is difficult to believe that college doors will forever stand closed to them. I believe that the time will come when any system framed for boys alone or for girls alone will be looked upon in the same light in which we now regard a monastery or a nunnery. Precisely the same course will not be prescribed to both sexes, but they will be associated in their education to the inestimable advantage of both.

This, however, I do not purpose now to discuss further. Neither shall I speak of the second deficiency,—that of home influences,—any further than it is connected with the third, namely, a culpable neglect of circumstances which minister directly to character. I design to speak only of those evils which lie on the surface, patent to the most casual observer, and which may be removed without any change in the structure of society. And among the first of these I reckon the mean and meagre homes provided for the college students. If the State were poor, if the question were between mere rude shelter and no college education, we should do well to choose the former, and our choice would be our glory. It would be worthwhile even to live in such a house as Thoreau suggests, a tool-box with a few augur-holes bored in it to admit air, and a hook to hook down the lid at night. But we are not poor. Society has money enough to do everything it wishes to do; and it has provided no better homes for its young men because it has not come to the point of believing that better homes are necessary. Sometimes it affects to maintain that this way of living is beneficial, and talks of the disciplinary power of soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier, living on a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love of country or of duty, is ennobled by it; but it is also true, that a miser doing the same things for love of stocks and gold is degraded; and a dreamer doing it serenely unconscious is neither ennobled nor degraded, but is simply laying the foundation for dyspepsia. To despise the elegances of life when they interfere with its duties the part of a hero. To be indifferent to them when they stand in the way of knowledge is the attribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when they would contribute to both character and culture is neither the one nor the other. It was very well to cultivate the muses on a little oatmeal, when resources were so scanty that a bequest of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the Pilgrims—hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and famine and disease, but filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the conviction that only fortified by learning could be a blessing—gave of their scanty stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home during the four years of their college life,—years generally when they are most susceptible of impressions, most impatient of restraints, most removed from society, and most need to be surrounded by every inducement to a courteous and Christian life. What was a large winded liberality then may be but niggardliness or narrowness now. If indeed there be a principle in the case, the principle that this arrangement is better adapted to a generous growth than a more ornate one, then let it be carried out. Let all public edifices and private houses be reduced to a scale of Spartan simplicity; let camel's-hair and leathern girdles take the place of broadcloth, and meat be locusts and wild honey. But so long as treasures of art and treasures of wealth are lavished on churches, and courthouses, and capitols, and private dwellings, so long as earth and sea are forced to give up the riches which are in them for the adornment of the person and the enjoyment of the palate, we cannot consistently bring forward either principles or practice to defend our neglect withal. If the experiment of a rough and primitive life is to be tried, let it be tried at home, where community of interests, and diversity of tastes, and the refinements of family and social life, will prevent it from degenerating into a fatal failure; but do not let a horde of boys colonize in a base and shabby dwelling, unless you are willing to admit the corollary that they may to that extent become base and shabby. If they do become so they are scarcely blameworthy; if they do not, it is no thanks to the system, but because other causes come in to deflect its conclusions. But why set down a weight at one end of the lever because there is a power at the other? Why not wait until, in the natural course of things, lever comes to an obstacle, and then let power bear down with all its might to remove it?

Doubtless those who look back upon their college days through the luminous mist of years, see no gray walls or rough floors, and count it only less than sacrilege to find spot or wrinkle or any such thing on the garments of their alma mater. But awful is the gift of the gods that we can become used to things; awful, since, by becoming used to them, we become insensible to their faults and tolerant of their defects. Harvard is beloved of her sons: would she be any less beloved if she were also beautiful to outside barbarians? Would her fame be less fair, or her name less dear, if those who come up to her solemn feasts, filled the idea of her greatness, could not only tell her towers, but consider her palaces, without being forced to bury their admiration and reverence under the first threshold which they cross? O, be sure the true princess is not yet found, for king's daughter is all glorious within.

Deficiency takes shelter under antiquity and associations: associations may, indeed, festoon unlovely places, but would they cluster any less richly around walls that were stately and adequate? Is it not fitter that associations should adorn, than that they should conceal? If here and there a relic of the olden time is cherished because it is olden,—a house, a book, a dress,—shall we then live only in the houses, read only the books, and wear the dresses of our ancestors? If here and there some ship has breasted the billows of time, and sails the seas today because of its own inherent grace and strength, shall we, therefore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with difficulty be towed out of harbor, and must be kept afloat by constant application of tar and oakum? As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are a crown unto a man only when they are found in the way of righteousness. Laden with guilt and heavy woes, behold the AGED SINNER goes. A seemly old age is fair and beautiful, and to be had in honor by all people; but an old age squalid and pinched is of all things most pitiful.

After the Oration and Poem, which, having nothing distinctive, I pass over, comes the "Collation." The members of the Senior Class prepare a banquet,—sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense ranging from fifty to five hundred dollars,—to which they invite as many friends as they choose, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at evening parties, and the occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like America, it is probable that a certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such custom necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met without strict economy, and much parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory SYMPOSIUM. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,—whether there was generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class,—whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding,—to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable, or not unpleasant. I by no means say, that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any real elevation of character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences, and impatient of the restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. Have the students self-poise enough to refrain from these festive expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have they nobility, and generosity, and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance?

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The College green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded ..... as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of costume,—rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,—

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved By the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among the Blumenbuhl Mountains.

Nothing call be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth, and gaiety, and beauty—and in summer we are all young, and gay, and beautiful—mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky, and velvet sward, and the light breezes toying in the treetops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.

If only men would not dance! It is the most unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous movements, fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,—the sublime, the evanescent mysticisin of motion, without use, without aim, except its own overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which has been free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two Sticks." A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined. Airy movements are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than his dancing. The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine absence of drapery reveals processes, and thereby destroys results.

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame whereof being noised abroad, a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,—and I don't blame him,—he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how better than they did!" It was a rather different casus belli from that which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it "meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged against dancing. I would have women dance, and women only, because it is the most beautiful thing in the world. And I think my views are Scriptural, for I find that it was the VIRGINS of Israel that were to go forth in the dances of them that make merry. It was the DAUGHTERS of Shiloh that went out to dance in dances at the feast of the Lord on the south of Lebonah.

From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like bouquets of rare tropical flowers,—from the green, rainbowed in vivid splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,—from the green, sanctified already by the pale faces of sick, and wounded, and maimed soldiers who had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth, the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the slough of its material prosperity in to the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,—from suggestions, and fancies, and dreamy musing, and "phantasms sweet," into the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of fine, penetrating dust; and for lightly trooping fairies, a jam of heated human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the press; and when you have, with difficulty, and many contortions, and much apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of fans,—what? An enclosure, but no more illusion.

Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. When it is prosecuted in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time. The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly assumed by people who have but a casual and partial society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy. That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.

There were, besides, peculiar desagrements on this occasion. As I said, there was no illusion,—not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and Apollos. The boys were boys, young, full of healthful promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at ease in their situation,—indeed, very much NOT at ease,—unmistakably warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I dare say, under ordinary circumstances,—one was really lovely, with soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,—but Venus herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowzy,—puff-balls revolving through an atmosphere of dust,—a maze of steaming, reeking human couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than Spartan fortitude.

It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns seemed to have changed hearts,—perhaps they had. It was the boys that were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic. They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that. The girls threw themselves into it pugnis et calcibus,—unshrinking, indefatigable. Did I say that it was amusing? I should rather say that it was painful. Can it be anything but painful to see young girls exhibiting the hardihood of the "professional" without the extenuating necessity?

There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer.

If the title of my article do not sufficiently indicate the depth and breadth of knowledge on which my opinions assume to be based, let me, that I may not seem to claim confidence upon false pretences, confess that I have never seen, either in this country or abroad, any ballet-dancer or any dancer on any stage. I do not suppose that I have ever been at any assembly where waltzing was a part of the amusements half a dozen times in my life, and never in the daytime, upon this occasion. I also admit that the sensations with which one would look upon this performance at Harvard would depend very much upon whether one went to it from that end of society which begins at the Jardin Mabille, or that which begins at a New England farm-house. I speak from the stand-point of the New England farm-house. Whether that or the Jardin Mabille is nearer the stand-point of the Bible, every one must decide for himself. When I say "this is right, this is wrong," I do not wish to be understood as settling the question for others, but as expressing my own strongest conviction. When I say that the present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer, I mean that, from what I have heard and read of ballet-dancers, I judge that these girls gyrating in the centre of their gyrating and unmanageable hoops, cannot avoid, or do not know how to avoid, at any rate do not avoid, the exposure which the short skirts of the ballet-dancer are intended to make, and which, taking to myself all the shame of both the prudery and the coarseness if I am wrong, I call an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not. Indeed, I do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but altogether objectionable. Questionable action is often consecrated by holy motive, and there, even mistake is not fatal; but in this thing is no noble principle to neutralize practical error.

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at least honest; and it not be that the first fresh impressions of an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and correct views as those which are the result of many after-thoughts, long and use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.

O girls, I implore you to believe me! They are not your true friends who would persuade you that you can permit this thing with impunity. It is not they who best know your strength, your power, your possibilities. It is not they who pay you the truest homage. Believe ME, for it is not possible that I can have any but the highest motive. If the evil of foreign customs is to be incorporated into American society, if foul freedom of manners is to defile our pure freedom of life, if the robes of our refinement are to be white only when relieved against the dark background revealed by polluted stage of a corrupt metropolis, on you will fall the burden of the consequences. Believe ME, for your weal and mine are one. Your glory is my glory. Your degradation is mine. There are honeyed words whose very essence is insult. There are bold and bitter words whose roots lie in the deepest reverence. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Beware of the honor which is dishonor.

I hear that the ground is taken that the affairs of Class-Day are not a legitimate subject of public comment; that it is a private matter of the Senior Class, of which one has no more right to speak in print than one has so to speak of a house in Beacon Street to which one might be invited. Is it indeed so? I have no right to go into Mr. Smith's house in Beacon Street,—I use the term Smith as simply generic, not meaning to imply for a moment that so plebeian a name ever marred a Beacon Street door-plate,—and subsequently print that I was hospitably entreated, or that the chair-covers were faded and the conversation brilliant. Neither have I any right to go into Master Jones's room, in Hollis Hall, and inform the public that he keeps wine in his cigar-box, and that he entertained his friends awkwardly or gracefully. But suppose all the Beacon Street families have a custom of devoting one day of every year to festivities, in which festivities all Boston, and all the friends, and the friends' friends, whom each Beacon Street family chooses to invite, are invited to partake. The Common, and the State-House, and the Music-Hall, &c. are set apart for dancing, the houses are given up to feasting,—and this occurs year after year. Is it a strictly private affair? I have still no right to denounce or applaud or in any way characterize Mr. Smith's special arrangements; but have I not a right to discuss in the most public manner the general features of the custom? May I not say that I consider feasting a possible danger, and the dancing a certain evil, and assign my reasons for these opinions?

I have spoken of the condition of some of the buildings. I find in the College records repeated instances of the College authorities appealing to the public concerning this very thing. So early as 1651, the Rev. Henry Dunster, President of the College, represented to the Commissioners of the United Colonies the decaying condition of the College buildings, and the necessity of their repair and enlargement: and the Commisioners reply, that they will recommend to the Colonies to give some yearly help, by pecks, half-bushels, and bushels of wheat. Is a subject that is brought before Congress improper to be brought before the public in a magazine?

I have spoken of the banqueting arranged by the Senior Class. Is that private? I find in a book regularly printed and published, a book written by a former President of the College,—a man whom no words of mine can affect, yet whom I cannot pass without laying at his feet my tribute of gratitude and reverence; a man who lives to receive from his contemporaries the honors which are generally awarded only by posterity,—I find in this book accounts of votes passed by the Corporation and Overseers, prohibiting Commencers from "preparing or providing either plum-cake, or roasted, boiled, or baked meats, or pies of any kind"; and afterwards, if anyone should do anything contrary to this act, or "go about to evade it by plain cake, they shall not be admitted to their degree; and also, "that commons be of better quality, have more variety, clean table-cloths of convenient length and breadth twice a week, and that plates be allowed." Now if the plum-cake and pies of the "Commencers" are spread before the public, how shall one know that the plum-cake and pies of an occasion at least equally public, and only a month beforehand, must not be mentioned? If any family in Beacon Street should publish its housekeeping rules and items in this unhesitating manner, I think a very pardonable confusion of ideas might exist as to what was legitimately public, and what must be held private. If it be said that these items concern a period from which the many years that have since elapsed remove the seal of silence, I have but to turn to the Boston Daily Advertiser, a journal whose taste and judgment are unquestionable, and find in its issue of July 18, 1863, eight closely printed columns devoted to a minute description of what they said, and what they did, at the College festival arranged by the Association of the Alumni, in which description may be read such eminently private incidents as that—by some unfortunate mistake, which would have been a death-blow to any Beacon Street housekeeper—there were one hundred more guests than there were plates, and—what it might be hoped would be quite unnecessary to state—that the unlucky De trop "bore the disappointment with the most admirable good-breeding, AND RETIRED FROM THE HALL WITHOUT NOISE OR DISTURBANCE." (Noble army of martyrs! Let a monument more durable than brass rise in the hearts of their countrymen to commemorate their heroism, and let it graven all over, in characters of living light, with the old-time query, "Why didn't Jack eat his supper?")

I find also in the same issue of the same paper the Commencement Dinner, its guests, its quantity and quality, its talk, its singing of songs, and giving of gifts, spread before the public. If, now, the festivities of Commencement and of the Alumni Association are public, by what token shall one know that the festivities of Class-Day, which have every appearance of being just as public, are in reality a family affair, and strictly private?

I have spoken of waltzing. The propriety of my speaking must stand or fall with the previous count. But in the book to which I have before referred is recorded a vote passed by the Overseers, "To restrain unsuitable and unseasonable dancing in the College." If a rule of the College is published throughout the land, is not the land in some measure appealed to, and may it not speak when it thinks it sees a custom in open and systematic violation of the rule?

But, independent of this special rule, Harvard College was founded in the early days of the Colony. It was the pet and pride and hope of the colonists. They gave to it of their abundance and their poverty. To what end? "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches," says the author of "New England First-Fruits." The first Constitution of the College declares one of its objects to be "to make and establish all such orders, statutes, and constitutions as they shall see necessary for the instituting, guiding, and furthering of the said College, and the several members thereof, from time to time, in piety, morality, and learning." Later, its objects are said to be "the advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences," and "the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness." Of the rules of the College, one is, "Let every student be earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and, therefore, to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning." Quincy says that to the Congregational clergy the "institution is perhaps more indebted than to any other class of men for early support, if not for existence." That it has not avowedly turned aside from its original object is indicated by the motto which it still bears, Christo et Ecclesiae. Now I wish to know if the official sanction of this College, founded by statesmen-clergy for the promotion of piety and learning, to further the welfare of the State, consecrated to Christ and the Church, is to be given to a practice which no one will maintain positively conduces to either piety or learning, which many believe to be positively detrimental to both, and which an overwhelming majority of the clergy who founded the College, and of their ecclesiastical descendants at the present day, would, I am confident, condemn, and yet is not to be publicly spoken of, because it is a private affair! Has it any right to privacy? Does the College belong to a Senior Class, or to the State? Have the many donations been given, and the appropriations been made, for the pleasure or even profit of any one class, or for the whole Commonwealth? Has any class any right to introduce in any College hall, or anywhere, as a College class, with the sanction of the Faculty, a custom which is entirely disconnected with either learning or piety, a custom of doubtful propriety, not to say morality inasmuch as many believe it to be wrong, and a custom, therefore, whose tendency is to weaken confidence in the College, and consequently to restrict its beneficence? And is the discussion of this thing a violation of the rites of hospitality?

These are my counts against "Class-Day," as it is now conducted. It contains much that is calculated to promote neither learning nor godliness, but to retard both. Neither literary nor moral excellence seems to enter as an element into its standard. In point of notoriety and popular interest it seems to me to reach, if not to over-top, Commencement-Day, and therefore it tends to subordinate scholarship to other and infinitely less important matters. It in a manner necessitates an expenditure which many are ill able to bear, and under which, I have reason to believe, many parents do groan, being burdened. It has not the pleasure and warmth of reunion to recommend it, for it precedes separation. The expense is not incurred by men who are masters of their own career, who know where they stand and what they can do; but chiefly by boys who are dependent upon others, and whose knowledge of ways and means is limited, while their knowledge of wants is deep and pressing and aggressive. It is an extraordinary and unnecessary expense, coming in the midst of ordinary and necessary expense, while the question of reimbursement is still entirely in abeyance. It launches young men at the outset of their career into extravagance and display,—limited indeed in range, but rampant within that range,—and thereby throws the influence of highest authority in favor of, rather than against, that reckless profusion, display, and dissipation which is the weakness and the bane of our social life. It signalizes in a marked and public manner the completion of the most varied and thorough course of study in the country, and the commencement of a career which should be the most noble and beneficial, not by peculiar and appropriate ceremonies, but by the commonest rites of the lecture-room and ball-room; and I cannot but think that, especially at this period of history, when no treasure is esteemed too precious for sacrifice, and the land is red with the blood of her best and bravest,—when Harvard herself mourns for her children lost, but glories in heroes fallen,—that the most obvious and prominent customs of Class-Day would be more honored in the breach than in the observance.

I look upon the violation of hospitality as one of the seven deadly sins,—a sin for which no punishment is too great; but this sin I have not consciously, and I do not think I have actually, committed. I cannot but suspect, that, if I had employed the language of exclusive eulogy,—such language as is employed at and concerning the Commencement dinners and the Alumni dinners, I might have described the celebration of Class-Day with much more minuteness than I have attempted to do, and should have heard no complaints of violated hospitality. This I would gladly have done, had it been possible. As it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me objectionable,—certainly with no design so ridiculous as that of setting up myself against Harvard University, but equally certainly with no heart so craven as to shrink from denouncing what seemed to me wrong because it would be setting myself against Harvard University. Opinions must be judged by their own weight, not by the weight of the persons who utter them. The fair fame of Harvard is the possession of every son and daughter of Massachusetts, and the least stain that mars her escutcheon is the sorrow of all. But Harvard is not the Ark of the Covenant, to be touched only by consecrated hands, upon penalty of instant death. She is honorable, but not sacred; wise, but not infallible. To Christo et Ecclesiae, she has a right; to Noli me tangere, she has none. A very small hand may hurl an arrow. If it is heaven-directed, it may pierce in between the joints of the armor. If not, it may rebound upon the archer. I make the venture, promising that I shall not follow the example of that President of Harvard who died of a broken heart, because, according to Cotton Mather, he "FELL UNDER THE DISPLEASURE OF CERTAIN GOOD MEN WHO MADE A FIGURE IN THAT NEIGHBORHOOD."

As it may never again happen to me to be writing about colleges, I desire to say in this paper everything I have to say on the subject, and therefore take this opportunity to refer to the practice of "hazing," although it is but remotely connected with Class-Day. If we should find it among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill with their meal on side of the saddle and a stone on the other to balance, as their fathers did, because it never occurred to them to divide the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should be surprised; but "hazing" occurs among boys who have been accustomed to the circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to know what honor and rage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies honor, and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its platitude, its one over-powering and fatal characteristic is its intense and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and bones and blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own weight, and take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of Sophomores club together in such numbers as to render opposition useless, and pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions pounced upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to doing. For sweet pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized by the Southern chivalry.

The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,—takes the conceit out of them. But if there is any Class in College so divested of conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the Law nor the Gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness, if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself of right are anything more than a name, let the young men who mean to make time minister to life scorn this debasing and stupid practice.

Why, as one resource against this, as well as for its own intrinsic importance, should there not be a military department to every college, as well as a mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military normal school, so that the exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young, adventurous strength and joy in being, might not only be kept from striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions, but might become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes. Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would so train and LIMBER the physical powers, that the superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the greater importance now-a-days, an ear that can detect a false quantity in a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off, and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power; but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown great, and done the state service in their generation; but these times demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. But the education of our unwarlike days is not adequate to the emergencies of this martial hour. We must be seasoned with something stronger than Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden under foot of men. True, all education is worthy. Everything that exercises the mind fits it for its work; but professional education is indispensable to professional men. And the profession, par excellence, of every man of this generation is war. Country overrides all personal considerations. Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his country. When she calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if possible, prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are now at Harvard, college boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives no them direct advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as it makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for all of military education which their college gives them, they are fit only for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of military drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this waste. She cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It is harder to find brains than to find hands. The average mental endowment may be no higher in college than out; but granting it to be as high, the culture which it receives gives it immense advantage. The fruits of that culture, readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in the service of the State. Military knowledge and practice should be imparted and enforced to utilize ability, and make it the instrument, not only of personal, but of national welfare. That education which gives men the advantage over others in the race of life should be so directed as to convey that advantage to country, when she stands in need. Every college might and should be made a nursery of athletes in mind and body, clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained,—a nursery of soldiers; quick, self-possessed, brave and cautions and wary, ready in invention, skilful to command men and evolve from a mob an army,—a nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no lawless revels, midnight orgies, brutal outrages, launching out already attainted into an attainting world, but with many a memory of adventure, wild, it may be, and not over-wise, yet pure as a breeze from the hills,—banded and sworn

"To serve as model for the mighty world, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man."



SUCCESS IN LIFE

THE SUCCESSFUL

There are successes more melancholy than any failure. There are failures more noble than success. The man who began life as a ploughboy, who went from his father's farm to the great city with his wardrobe tied up in his handkerchief, and one dollar in his pocket, and who by application, economy, and forecast has amassed a fortune, is not necessarily a successful man. If his object was to amass a fortune, he is so far successful; but it is a mean and miserable object, and his life would be a contemptible, if it were not a terrible, failure. We do not keep this sufficiently in mind. American society, and perhaps all society, is too apt to do homage to material prosperity; but material prosperity may be obtained by the sacrifice of moral grandeur; and so obtained, it is an apple of Sodom. A man may call out his whole energy, wield all his power, and wealth follow as one of the results. This is well. Wealth may even be an object, if it be a subordinate object,—the servant of a higher power. Wealth may minister to the best part of man,—but only minister, not master. Only as a minister it deserves regard. When it usurps the throne and becomes monarch, it is of all things most pitiful and abject. The man who sets out with the determination to be rich as an end, sets out with a very ignoble determination; and he who seeks or values wealth for the respect which it secures and the position it gives, is not very much higher in the scale; yet such people are often held up to the admiration and imitation of American youth; and oftener still have those men been held up for imitation who, whether by determination or drift, had become rich, and whose sole claim to distinction was that they had become rich. Again and again I have seen "success" which seemed to me to be the brand of ignominy rather than the stamp of worth,—the epitaph of culture, if not of character. I look on with a profound and regretful pity. You successful,—YOU! with half your powers lying dormant,—you, with your imagination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your religion a thing of tithes and forms;—you successful, in whom romance has died out; to whom fidelity and constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice; who remember love and heroism and self-sacrifice only as the vaporings of youth; who measure principles by your purse, utility by your using; who see nothing glorious this side of honesty; nothing terrible in the surrender of faith; nothing degrading that is not amenable to the law; nothing in your birthright that may not be sold for a mess of pottage, if only the mess be large enough, and the pottage savory;—you successful? Is this success? Then, indeed, humanity is a base and bitter failure.

It is not necessary that a man should be a robber or a murderer, in order to degrade himself. Without defrauding his neighbor of a cent, without laying himself open to a single accusation of illegality or violence, a man may destroy himself. A moral suicide, he kills out all that belongs to his highest nature, and leaves but a bare and battered wreck where the temple of the holy Ghost should rise.

"Measure not the work Until the day's out, and the labor done; Then bring your gauges."

Is that man successful who trades on his country's necessities? He, not a politician, nor a horse-jockey, nor a footpad, but a man who talks of honor and integrity,—a man of standing and influence, whose virtue is not tempted by hunger, whose life has been such that he may be supposed intelligently to comprehend the interests which are at stake, and the measures which should be taken to secure them,—is he successful because he obtains in a few months, by the perquisites—not illegal, but strained to the extreme verge of legal—of an office,—not illegal, but accidental, not in the line of promotion,—a sum of money which the greatest merit and the highest office in the land cannot claim for years? He is shrewd. He understands his business. He knows the ins and outs. He can manage the sharpers. He can turn an honest penny, and a good many of them. He need not refuse to do himself a good turn with his left hand, while he is doing his country a good turn with his right. It is all fair and aboveboard. He does the business assigned him, and does it well. He takes no more compensation than the law allows. The money may as well go to him as to shoddy contractors, Shylock sutlers, and the legion of plebeian rascals. But it was a good stroke. It was a great chance. It was a rare success.

O wretched failure! O pitiful abortion! O accursed hunger for gold! When the nation struggles in a death-agony, when her life-blood is poured out from hundreds of noble hearts, when men and women and children are sending up to the Lord the incense of daily sacrifice in her behalf, and we know not yet whether prayer and effort, whether faith and works, shall avail,—whether our lost birthright, sought carefully, and with tears, shall be restored to us once more,—in this solemn and awful hour, a man can close his eyes and ears to the fearful sights and great signs in the heavens, and, stooping earthward, delve with his muck-rake in the gutter for the paltry pennies! A man? A MAN! Is this manhood? Is this manliness? Is this the race that our institutions engender? Is this the best production which we have a right to expect? Is this the result which Christianity and civilization combine to offer? Is this the advantage which the nineteenth century claims over its predecessors? Is this the flower of all the ages,—earth's last, best gift to heaven?

No,—no,—no,—this is a changeling, and no child. The true brother's blood cries to us from Baltimore. It rings out from the East where Winthrop fell. It swells up from the West with Lyon's dirge. And all along, from hill and valley and river-depths, where the soil is drenched, and the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are scattered,—cleaving clearly through the rattle of musketry, mingling grandly with the "diapason of the cannonade," or floating softly up under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice" ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the magnificent strain,—victorious, triumphant, exultant,—

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." Sweet and honorable is it for country to die.



THE UNSUCCESSFUL

The unsuccessful men are all around us; and among them are those who confound all distinctions set up by society, and illustrate the great law of compensation set up by God, cutting society at right angles, and obtuse angles, and acute angles, unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned by the careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to those for whom things suggest thoughts.

Have you not seen them,—these unsuccessful men?—men who seem not to have found their niche, but are always on somebody's hands for settlement, or, if settled, never at rest? If they are poor, their neighbors say, Why does he not learn a trade? or, Why does he not stick to his trade? He might be well off, if he were not so flighty. He has a good head-piece, but he potters rhymes; he tricks out toy-engines and knick-knacks; he roams about the woods gathering snakes and toads; and meanwhile he is out at the elbows. If he is rich, they say, Why does he not make a career? He has great resources. His brain is inexhaustible. He is equipped for any emergency. There is nothing which he might not attain, if he would only apply himself, but he fritters himself away. He sticks to nothing. He touches on this, that, and the other, and falls off.

True, O Philosophers, he does stick to nothing, but condemn him not too harshly. It is the old difficulty of the square man in the round hole, and the round man in the square hole. They never did rest easy there since time began, and never will. Many—perhaps the greater number—of people have no overmastering inclination for any employment. They are farmers because their fathers were before them, and that road was graded for them,—or shoemakers, or lawyers, or ministers, for the same reason. If circumstances had impelled them in a different direction, they would have gone in a different direction, and been content. It is not easy for them to conceive that a man is an indifferent lawyer, because his raw material should have been worked up into a practical engineer; or an unthrifty shoemaker, because he is a statesman nipped in the bud. Yet such things are. Sometimes these men are gay, giddy, rollicking fellows. Sometimes their faces are known at the gaming-houses and the gin-palaces. Sometimes they go down quickly to a dishonored grave, over which Love stands bewildered, and weeps her unavailing tears. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are gloomy, sad, silent. Perhaps they are morose. Worse still, they are whining, fretful, complaining. You would even call them sour. Often they are cynical and disagreeable. But be not too hasty, too sweeping, too clear-cut. I have seen such men who were the reverse of the Pharisees. Their faces were a tombstone. The portals of their soul were guarded by lions scarcely chained. But though their temple had no Beautiful Gate, it was none the less a temple, consecrated to the Most High. Within it, day and night, the sacred fire burned, the sacred Presence rested. There, honor, justice, devotion, and all heroic virtues dwelt. Thence falsehood, impurity, profanity, whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,—were excluded. They are unsuccessful, because they will not lower the standard which their youth unfurled. Its folds float high above them, out of reach, but not out of sight, nor out of desire. With constant feet they are climbing up to grasp it. You do not see it; no, and you never will. You need not strain your aching eyes; but they see it, and comfort their weary hearts withal.

These men may receive sympathy, but they do not need pity. They are a thousand times more blessed than the vulgarly successful. The shell is wrinkled, and gray, and ugly; but within, the meat is sweet and succulent. Perhaps they will never make a figure in the world, but

"True happiness abides with him alone Who in the silent hour of inward thought Can still suspect and still revere himself In lowliness of mind."

And it is even better never to be happy than to be sordidly happy. It is better to be nobly dissatisfied than meanly content. A splendid sadness is better than a vile enjoyment.

I hear of people that never failed in anything they undertook. I do not believe in them. In the first place, however, I do not believe this testimony is true. It is the honest false-witness, it is the benevolent slander of their affectionate and admiring friends. But if it were in any case true, I should not believe in the man of whom it was affirmed. It is difficult to conceive that a person of elevated character should not attempt many things too high for him. He finds himself set down in the midst of life. Earth, air, and water, his own mind and heart, the whole mental, moral, and physical world, teem with mysteries. He is surrounded with problems incapable of mortal solution. He must grasp many of them and he foiled. He must attack many foes and be repulsed. He may be stupidly blind, or selfish, or cowardly, and make no endeavor,—in which case he will of course endure no defeat. If he sets out with small aims, he may accomplish them; but it is not a thing to boast of. It is better to fall below a high standard than to come up to a low one,—to try great things and fail, than to try only small ones and succeed. For he who attempts grandly will achieve much, while he whose very desires are small will make but small acquisitions. Of course, I am not speaking now of definite, measurable matters of fact, in which the reverse is the case. Of course, it is better to build a small house and pay for it, than to build a palace and involve yourself in debt. It is wiser to set yourself a reasonable task and perform it, than a prodigious one and do nothing. I am endeavoring to present only one side of a truth which is many-sided,—and that side is, that great deeds are done by those who aspire greatly. You may not attain perfection, but if you strive to be perfect, you will be better than if you were content to be as good as your neighbors. You are not, perhaps, the world's coming man; but if you aim at the completest possible self-development, you will be a far greater man than if your only aim is to keep out of the poor-house. "I have taken all knowledge to be my province," said Lord Bacon. He did not conquer; he could not even overrun his whole province; but he made vast inroads,—vaster by far than if he had designed only to occupy a garden-plot in the Delectable Land. True greatness is a growth, and not an accident. The bud, brought into light and warmth, may burst suddenly into flower; but the seed must have been planted, and the kindly soil must have wrapped it about, and shade and shine and shower must have wrought down into the darkness, and nursed and nurtured the tiny germ. The touch of circumstance may reveal, may even quicken, but cannot create, nobility.

This I reckon to be success in life,—fitness,—perfect adaptation. I hold him successful, and him only, who has found or conquered a position in which he can bring himself into full play. Success is perfect or partial, according as it comes up to, or falls below, this standard. But entire success is rare in this world. Success in business, success in ambition, is not success in life, though it may be comprehended in it. Very few are the symmetrical lives. Very few of us are working at the top of our bent. One may give scope to his mechanical invention, but his poetry is cramped. One has his intellect at high pressure, but the fires are out under his heart. One is the bond-servant of love, and Pegasus becomes a dray-horse, Apollo must keep the pot boiling, and Minerva is hurried with the fall sewing. So we go, and above us the sun shines, and the stars throb; and beneath us the snows, and the flowers, and the blind, instinctive earth; and over all, and in all, God blessed forever.

Now, then, success being the best thing, we do well to strive for it; but success being difficult to attain, if not unattainable, it remains for us to wring from our failures all the sap and sustenance and succor that are in them, if so be we may grow thereby to a finer and fuller richness, and hear one day the rapturous voice bid us come up higher.

And be it remembered, what a man is, not what a man does, is the measure of success. The deed is but the outflow of the soul. By their fruits ye shall know THEM. The outward act has its inward significance, though we may not always interpret it aright, and its moral aspect depends upon the agent. "In vain," says Sir Thomas Browne, "we admire the lustre of anything seen; that which is truly glorious is invisible." Character, not condition, is the trust of life. A man's own self is God's most valuable deposit with him. This is not egotism, but the broadest benevolence. A man can do no good to the world beyond himself. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If a man's soul is stunted and gnarled and dwarfed, his actions will be. If his soul is corrupt and base and petty, so will his actions be. Faith is the basis of works. Essence underlies influence. If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, and his soul be not filled with good, I say that an untimely birth is better than he.

When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom the world calls unsuccessful, furnished with every virtue and adorned with every grace, made considerate through suffering, sympathetic by isolation, spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm and contemptuous, tender even of the sorrows and tolerant of the joys which they despise, enduring the sympathy and accepting the companionship of weakness because it is kindly offered, though it be a burden to be dropped just inside the door, and not a treasure to be taken into the heart's chamber, I am ready to say, Blessed are the unsuccessful.

Blessed ARE the unsuccessful, the men who have nobly striven and nobly failed. He alone is in an evil case who has set his heart on false or selfish or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, he is alike unsuccessful. But he who "loves high" is king in his own right, though he "live low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is sure. God may overrule his desires, and thwart his hopes, and baffle his purposes, but all things shall work together for his good. Though he fall, he shall rise again. Every defeat shall be a victory. Every calamity shall drop down blessing. Inward disappointment shall minister to enduring joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press the wine of life.

Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his promise. As I write that name, hallowed from our olden time, and now baptized anew for the generations that are to follow, comes back again warm, bright, midsummer morning, freighted with woe,—that dark, sad summer morning that wrenched him away from sweet life, and left silence for song, ashes for beauty,—only cold, impassive clay, where glowing, vigorous vitality had throbbed and surged.

Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that early grave, but, one by one, from his silent desk came those brilliant books, speaking to all who had ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith,—words of higher import than their sound,—key-words to a lofty life; for all the bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness that gleam in golden setting throughout his books must have been matched with bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul from which they sprang. Looking at what might have been accomplished with endowments so rare, culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our lament for the dead is not untinged with bitterness. A mind so well poised, so self-confident, so eager in its honorable desire for honorable fame, that, without the stimulus of publication, it could produce work after work, compact and finished, studded with gems of wit and wisdom, white and radiant with inward purity,—could polish away roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal perfection, and attaining a rare excellence,—surely, here was promise of great things for the future; but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little drummer-boy, not knowing what he did, sped a bullet straightway to as brave a heart as ever beat, and quenched a royal life.

I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand hearts will supply each its own name wreathed with cypress and laurel. Were these lives failures? Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its offset? The choice of life or death is in no man's hands. The choice is only and occasionally in the manner. All must die. To a few, and only a few, is granted the opportunity of dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the King of Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful brow, and set it on their own triumphant. They die, not from inevitable age or irresistible disease, but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime and zenith of life, in that glorious transition-hour when hope is culminating in fruition. They die of set purpose, with unflinching will, for God and the right. O thrice and four times happy these who bulwark liberty with their own breasts! No common urn enshrines their sacred dust. No vulgar marble emblazons their hero-deeds. Every place which their life has touched becomes at once and forever holy ground. A nation's gratitude embalms their memory. In the generations which are to come, when we are lying in undistinguished earth, mothers shall lead their little children by the hand, and say: "Here he was born. This is the blue sky that bent over his baby head. Here he fell, fighting for his country. Here his ashes lie";—and the path thither shall be well worn, and for many and many a year there shall be hushed voices, and trembling lips, and tear-dimmed eyes. Everywhere there shall be death,—yours and mine,—but only here and there immortality,—and it is his.

So the young soldier's passing away is not untimely. The longest life can accomplish only benefaction and fame, and the life that has accomplished these has reached life's ultimatum. It is a fair and decorous fate to devote length of days to humanity, but he who gathers up his life with all its beauty and happiness and hope, and lays it on the altar of sacrifice,—he has done all. A century of earthly existence only scatters its benefits one by one. The martyr binds his in a single bundle of life, and the offering is complete. To all noble minds fame is sweet and desirable, and threescore years and ten are all too few to carve the monument more durable than brass; but when such men as Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools that fall from their dying grasp, and complete the fragmentary structure, in shape more graceful, it may be, in height more majestic, in colors more lovely, than their own hands could have wrought. We attribute to them, not simply what they did, but all that they might have done. Had Winthrop lived, failing health, adverse circumstance, might have blasted his promise in the bud; but now nothing of that can ever mar his fame. We surround him with his aspirations. We glorify him with his possibilities. He is not only the knight without fear and without reproach, but the author immortal as the brightest auspices could have made his strong and growing powers. A century could not have left him greater than the love and hope and sorrow of his countrymen, building on the little that is known of his short and beautiful life, have made him.

O men and women everywhere who are following on to know the Lord, faint yet pursuing; men women who are troubled, toiling, doubting, hoping, watching, struggling; whose attainments "through the long green days, worn bare of grass and sunshine," lag hopelessly behind your aspirations; who are haunted evermore by the ghosts of your young purposes; who see far off the shining hills your feet are fain to tread; who work your work with dumb, assiduous energy, but with perpetual protest,—I bid you good luck in the name of the Lord.



HAPPIEST DAYS

Long ago, when you were a little boy or a little girl,—perhaps not so very long ago, either,—were you never interrupted in your play by being called in to have your face washed, your hair combed, and your soiled apron exchanged for a clean one, preparatory to an introduction to Mrs. Smith, or Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early friend? And after being ushered into that august presence, and made to face a battery of questions which where either above or below your capacity, and which you consequently despised as trash or resented as insult, did you not, as were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh breathed out upon the air,—"Dear child, he is seeing his happiest days"? In the concrete, it was Mrs. Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of you. But going back to general principles, it was Commonplacedom expressing its opinion of childhood.

There never was a greater piece of absurdity in the world. I thought so when I was a child, and now I know it; and I desire here to brand it as at once a platitude and a falsehood. How the idea gained currency, that childhood is the happiest period of life, I cannot conceive. How, once started, it kept afloat, is equally incomprehensible. I should have supposed that the experience of every sane person would have given the lie to it. I should have supposed that every soul, as it burst into flower, would have hurled off the imputation. I can only account for it by recurring to Lady Mary Wortley Montague's statistics, and concluding that the fools ARE three out of four in every person's acquaintance.

I for one lift up my voice emphatically against the assertion, and do affirm that I think childhood is the most undesirable portion of human life, and I am thankful to be well out of it. I look upon it as no better than a mitigated form of slavery. There is not a child in the land that can call his soul, or his body, or his jacket his own. A little soft lump of clay he comes into the world, and is moulded into a vessel of honor or a vessel of dishonor long before he can put in a word about the matter. He has no voice as to his education or his training, what he shall eat, what he shall drink, or wherewithal he shall be clothed. He has to wait upon the wisdom, the whims, and often the wickedness of other people. Imagine, my six-foot friend, how you would feel, to be obliged to wear your woollen mittens when you desire to bloom out in straw-colored kids, or to be buttoned into your black waistcoat when your taste leads you to select your white, or to be forced under your Kossuth hat when you had set your heart on your black beaver: yet this is what children are perpetually called on to undergo. Their wills are just as strong as ours, and their tastes are stronger, yet they have to bend the one and sacrifice the other; and they do it under pressure of necessity. Their reason is not convinced; they are forced to yield to superior power; and, of all disagreeable things in the world, the most disagreeable is not to have your own way. When you are grown up, you wear a print frock because you cannot afford a silk, or because a silk would be out of place,—you wear India-rubber overshoes because your polished patent-leather would be ruined by the mud; and your self-denial is amply compensated by the reflection of superior fitness or economy. But a child has no such reflection to console him. He puts on his battered, gray old shoes because you make him; he hangs up his new trousers and goes back into his detestable girl's-frock because he will be punished if he does not, and it is intolerable.

It is of no use to say that this is their discipline, and is all necessary to their welfare. It is a repulsive condition of life in which such degrading SURVEILLANCE is necessary. You may affirm that an absolute despotism is the only government fit for Dahomey, and I may not disallow it; but when you go on and say that Dahomey is the happiest country in the world, why—I refer you to Dogberry. Now the parents of a child are, from the nature of the case, absolute despots. They may be wise, and gentle, and doting despots, and the chain may be satin-smooth and golden-strong; but if it be of rusty iron, parting every now and then and letting the poor prisoner violently loose, and again suddenly caught hold of, bringing him up with a jerk, galling his tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his temper,—it is all the same; there is no help for it. And really to look around the world and see the people that are its fathers and mothers is appalling,—the narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish, passionate, careworn, harassed men and women. Even we grown people, independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as much as we can do to keep the peace. Where is there a city, or a town, or a village, in which are no bickerings, no jealousies, no angers, no petty or swollen spites? Then fancy yourself, instead of the neighbor and occasional visitor of these poor human beings, their children, subject to their absolute control, with no power of protest against their folly, no refuge from their injustice, but living on through thick and thin right under their guns.

"Oh!" but you say, "this is a very one-sided view. You leave out entirely the natural tenderness that comes in to temper the matter. Without that, a child's situation would of course be intolerable; but the love that is born with him makes all things smooth."

No, it does not make all things smooth. It does wonders, to be sure, but it does not make cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm, nor fretful people easy, nor obstinate people reasonable, nor foolish people wise,—that is, it may do so spasmodically, but it does not hold them to it and keep them at it. A great deal of beautiful moonshine is written about the sanctities of home and the sacraments of marriage and birth. I do not mean to say that there is no sanctity and no sacrament. Moonshine is not nothing. It is light,—real, honest light,—just as truly as the sunshine. It is sunshine at second-hand. It illuminates, but indistinctly. It beautifies, but it does not vivify or fructify. It comes indeed from the sun, but in too roundabout a way to do the sun's work. So, if a woman is pretty nearly sanctified before she is married, wifehood and motherhood may accomplish the work; but there is not one man in ten thousand of the writers aforesaid who would marry a vixen, trusting to the sanctifying influences of marriage to tone her down to sweetness. A thoughtful, gentle, pure, and elevated woman, who has been accustomed to stand face to face with the eternities, will see in her child a soul. If the circumstances of her life leave her leisure and adequate repose, that soul will be to her a solemn trust, a sacred charge, for which she will give her own soul's life in pledge. But how many such women do you suppose there are in your village? Heaven forbid that I should even appear to be depreciating woman! Do I not know too well their strength, and their virtue which is their strength? But, stepping out of idyls and novels, and stepping into American kitchens, is it not true that the larger part of the mothers see in their babies, or act as if they saw, only babies? And if there are three or four or half a dozen of them, as there generally are, so much the more do they see babies whose bodies monopolize the mother's time to the disadvantage of their souls. She loves them, and she works for them day and night; but when they are ranting and ramping and quarrelling, and torturing her over-tense nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies herself energetically to the finite, by sending Harry with a round scolding into one corner, and Susy into another, with no light thrown upon the point in dispute, no principle settled as a guide in future difficulties, and little discrimination as to the relative guilt of the offenders. But there is no court of appeal before which Harry and Susy can lay their case in these charming "happiest days"!

Then there are parents who love their children like wild beasts. It is a passionate, blind, instinctive, unreasoning love. They have no more intelligent discernment, when an outside difficulty arises with respect to their children, than a she-bear. They wax furious over the most richly deserved punishment, if inflicted by a teacher's hand; they take the part of their child against legal authority; but observe, this does not prevent them from laying their own hands heavily on their children. The same obstinate ignorance and narrowness that are exhibited without exist within also. Folly is folly, abroad or at home. A man does not play the fool outdoors and act the sage in the house. When the poor child becomes obnoxious, the same unreasoning rage falls upon him. The object of a ferocious love is the object of an equally ferocious anger. It is only he who loves wisely that loves well.

The manner in which children's tastes are disregarded, their feelings ignored, and their instincts violated, is enough to disaffect one with childhood. They are expected to kiss all flesh that asks them to do so. They are jerked up into the laps of people whom they abhor. They say, "Yes, ma'am," under pain of bread and water for a week, when their unerring nature prompts them to hurl out emphatically, "No." They are sent out of the room whenever a fascinating bit of scandal is to be rehearsed, packed off to bed just as everybody is settled down for a charming evening, bothered about their lessons when their play is but fairly under way, and hedged and hampered on every side. It is true, that all this may be for their good, but what of that? So everything is for the good of grown-up people; but does that make us contented? It is doubtless for our good in the long run that we lose our pocket-books, and break our arms, and catch a fever, and have our brothers defraud a bank, and our houses burn down, and people steal our umbrellas, and borrow our books and never return them. In fact, we know that upon certain conditions all things work together for our good, but, notwithstanding, we find some things very unpleasant; and we may talk to our children of discipline and health by the hour together, and it will never be anything but an intolerable nuisance to them to be swooped off to bed by a dingy old nurse just as the people are beginning to come, and shining silk, and floating lace, and odorous, fragrant flowers are taking their ecstatic young souls back into the golden days of the good Haroun al Raschid.

Even in this very point lies one of the miseries of childhood, that no philosophy comes to temper their sorrow. We do not know why we are troubled, but we know there is some good, grand reason for it. The poor little children do not know even that. They find trouble utterly inconsequent and unreasonable. The problem of evil is to them absolutely incapable of solution. We know that beyond our horizon stretches the infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a chain whose beginning and end is eternity. So we readily adjust ourselves to mystery, and are content. We apply to everything inexplicable the test of partial view, and maintain our tranquillity. We fall into the ranks, and march on, acquiescent, if not jubilant. We hear the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry. Stalwart forms fall by our side, and brawny arms are stricken. Our own hopes bite the dust, our own hopes bury their dead; but we know that law is inexorable. Effect must follow cause, and there is no happening without causation. So, knowing ourselves to be only one small brigade of the army of the Lord, we defile through the passes of this narrow world, bearing aloft on our banner, and writing ever on our hearts, the divine consolation, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." This is an unspeakable tranquillizer and comforter, of which, woe is me! the little ones know nothing. They have no underlying generalities on which to stand. Law and logic and eternity are nothing to them. They only know that it rains, and they will have to wait another week before they go a-fishing; and why couldn't it have rained Friday just as well as Saturday? and it always does rain or something when I want to go anywhere,—so, there! And the frantic flood of tears comes up from outraged justice as well as from disappointed hope. It is the flimsiest of all possible arguments to say that their sorrows are trifling, to talk about their little cares and trials. These little things are great to little men and women. A pine bucket full is just as full as a hogshead. The ant has to tug just as hard to carry a grain of corn as the Irishman does to carry a hod of bricks. You can see the bran running out of Fanny's doll's arm, or the cat putting her foot through Tom's new kite, without losing your equanimity; but their hearts feel the pang of hopeless sorrow, or foiled ambition, or bitter disappointment,—and the emotion is the thing in question, not the event that caused it.

It is all additional disadvantage to children in their troubles, that they can never estimate the relations of things. They have no perspective. All things are at equal distances from the point of sight. Life presents to them neither foreground nor background, principal figure nor subordinates, but only a plain spread of canvas, on which one thing stands out just as big and just as black as another. You classify your desagrements. This is a mere temporary annoyance, and receives but a passing thought. This is a life-long sorrow, but it is superficial; it will drop off from you at the grave, be folded away with your cerements, and leave no scar on your spirit. This thrusts its lancet into the secret place where your soul abideth, but you know that it tortures only to heal; it is recuperative, not destructive, and you will rise from it to newness of life. But when little ones see a ripple in the current of their joy, they do not know, they cannot tell, that it is only a pebble breaking softly in upon the summer flow, to toss a cool spray up into the white bosom of the lilies, or to bathe the bending violets upon the green and grateful bank. It seems to them as if the whole strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, and hurled into a new channel, chasmed in the rough, rent granite. It is impossible to calculate the waste of grief and pathos which this incapacity causes. Fanny's doll aforesaid is left too near the fire, and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, to the utter ruin of her pretty face and her gay frock; and anon poor Fanny breaks her little heart in moans and sobs and sore lamentations. It is Rachel weeping for her children. I went on a tramp one May morning to buy a tissue-paper wreath of flowers for a little girl to wear to a May-party, where all the other little girls were expected to appear similarly crowned. After a long and weary search, I was forced to return without it. Scarcely had I pulled the bell, when I heard the quick pattering of little feet in the entry. Never in all my life shall I lose the memory of those wistful eyes, that did not so much as look up to my face, but levelled themselves to my hand, and filmed with disappointment to find it empty. I could see that the wreath was a very insignificant matter. I knew that every little beggar in the street had garlanded herself with sixpenny roses, and I should have preferred that my darling should be content with her own silky brown hair; but my taste availed her nothing, and the iron entered into her soul. Once a little boy, who could just stretch himself up as high as his papa's knee, climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet and upset the milk-pitcher. Terrified, he crept behind the flour-barrel, and there Nemesis found him, and he looked so charming and so guilty that two or three others were called to come and enjoy the sight. But he, unhappy midget, did not know that he looked charming; he did not know that his guilty consciousness only made him the more interesting; he did not know that he seemed an epitome of humanity, a Liliputian miniature of the great world; and his large, blue, solemn eyes were filled with remorse. As he stood there silent, with his grave, utterly mournful face, he had robbed a bank, he had forged a note, he had committed a murder, he was guilty of treason. All the horror of conscience, all the shame of discovery, all the unavailing regret of a detected, atrocious, but not utterly hardened pirate, tore his poor little innocent heart. Yet children are seeing their happiest days!

These people—the aforesaid three fourths of our acquaintance—lay great stress on the fact that children are free from care, as if freedom from care were one of the beatitudes of Paradise; but I should like to know if freedom from care is any blessing to beings who don't know what care is. You who are careful and troubled about many things may dwell on it with great satisfaction, but children don't find it delightful by any means. On the contrary, they are never so happy as when they can get a little care, or cheat themselves into the belief that they have it. You can make them proud for a day by sending them on some responsible errand. If you will not place care upon them, they will make it for themselves. You shall see a whole family of dolls stricken down simultaneously with malignant measles, or a restive horse evoked from a passive parlor-chair. They are a great deal more eager to assume care, than you are to throw it off. To be sure, they may be quite as eager to be rid of it after a while; but while this does not prove that care is delightful, it certainly does prove that freedom from care is not.

Now I should like, Herr Narr, to have you look at the other side for a moment: for there is a positive and a negative pole. Children not only have their full share of misery, but they do not have their full share of happiness; at least, they miss many sources of happiness to which we have access. They have no consciousness. They have sensations, but no perceptions. We look longingly upon them, because they are so graceful, and simple, and natural, and frank, and artless; but though this may make us happy, it does not make them happy, because they don't know anything about it. It never occurs to them that they are graceful. No child is ever artless to himself. The only difference he sees between you and himself is, that you are grown-up and he is little. Sometimes I think he does have a dim perception that when he is ill, it is because he has eaten too much, and he must take medicine, and feed on heartless dry toast, while, when you are ill, you have the dyspepsia, and go to Europe. But the beauty and sweetness of children are entirely wasted on themselves, and their frankness is a source of infinite annoyance to each other. A man enjoys HIMSELF. If he is handsome, or wise, or witty, he generally knows it, and takes great satisfaction in it; but a child does not. He loses half his happiness because he does not know that he is happy. If he ever has any consciousness, it is an isolated, momentary thing, with no relation to anything antecedent or subsequent. It lays hold on nothing. Not only have they no perception of themselves, but they have no perception of anything. They never recognize an exigency. They do not salute greatness. Has not the Autocrat told us of some lady who remembered a certain momentous event in our Revolutionary War, and remembered it only by and because of the regret she experienced at leaving her doll behind when her family was forced to fly from home? What humiliation is this! What an utter failure to appreciate the issues of life! For her there was no revolution, no upheaval of world-old theories, no struggle for freedom, no great combat of the heroisms. All the passion and pain, the mortal throes of error, the glory of sacrifice, the victory of an idea, the triumph of right, the dawn of a new era,—all, all were hidden from her behind a lump of wax. And what was true of her is true of all her class. Having eyes, they see not; with their ears they do not hear. The din of arms, the waving of banners, the gleam of swords, fearful sights and great signs in the heavens, or the still, small voice that thrills when wind and fire and earthquake have swept by, may proclaim the coming of the Lord, and they stumble along, munching bread-and-butter. Out in the solitudes Nature speaks with her many-toned voices, and they are deaf. They have a blind sensational enjoyment, such as a squirrel or a chicken may have, but they can in no wise interpret the Mighty Mother, nor even hear her words. The ocean moans his secret to unheeding ears. The agony of the underworld finds no speech in the mountain-peaks, bare and grand. The old oaks stretch out their arms in vain. Grove whispers to grove, and the robin stops to listen, but the child plays on. He bruises the happy butter-cups, he crushes the quivering anemone, and his cruel fingers are stained with the harebell's purple blood. Rippling waterfall and rolling river, the majesty of sombre woods, the wild waste of wilderness, the fairy spirits of sunshine, the sparkling wine of June, and the golden languor of October, the child passes by, and a dipper of blackberries, or a pocketful of chestnuts, fills and satisfies his horrible little soul. And in face of all this people say,—there are people who DARE to say,—that childhood's are the "happiest days."

I may have been peculiarly unfortunate in my surroundings, but the children of poetry and novels were very infrequent in my day. The innocent cherubs never studied in my school-house, nor played puss-in-the-corner in our backyard. Childhood, when I was young, had rosy checks and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told lies,—"whoppers" at that. It took the larger half of the apple. It was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who were in the midst.

This whole way of viewing childhood, this regretful retrospect of its vanished joys, this infatuated apotheosis of doughiness and rank unfinish, this fearful looking-for of dread old age, is low, gross, material, utterly unworthy of a sublime manhood, utterly false to Christian truth. Childhood is pre-eminently the animal stage of existence. The baby is a beast—a very soft, tender, caressive beast,—a beast full of promise,—a beast with the germ of an angel,—but a beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign of intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or fear, or passion, or purpose, than a week-old monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny. In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, desperate-looking animal. It is only as it grows old that the beast gives way and the angel-wings bud, and all along through infancy and childhood the beast gives way and gives way and the angel-wings bud and bud; and yet we entertain our angel so unawares, that we look back regretfully to the time when the angel was in abeyance and the beast raved regnant.

The only advantage which childhood has over manhood is the absence of foreboding, and this indeed is much. A large part of our suffering is anticipatory, much of which children are spared. The present happiness is clouded for them by no shadowy possibility; but for this small indemnity shall we offset the glory of our manly years? Because their narrowness cannot take in the contingencies that threaten peace, are they blessed above all others? Does not the same narrowness cut them off from the bright certainty that underlies all doubts and fears? If ignorance is bliss, man stands at the summit of mortal misery, and the scale of happiness is a descending one. We must go down into the ocean-depths, where, for the scintillant soul, a dim, twilight instinct lights up gelatinous lives. If childhood is indeed the happiest period, then the mysterious God-breathed breath was no boon, and the Deity is cruel. Immortality were well exchanged for the blank of annihilation.

We hear of the dissipated illusions of youth, the paling of bright, young dreams. Life, it is said, turns out to be different from what was pictured. The rosy-hued morning fades away into the gray and livid evening, the black and ghastly night. In especial cases it may be so, but I do not believe it is the general experience. It surely need not be. It should not be. I have found things a great deal better than I expected. I am but one; but with all my oneness, with all that there is of me, I protest against such generalities. I think they are slanderous of Him who ordained life, its processes and its vicissitudes. He never made our dreams to outstrip our realizations. Every conception, brain-born, has its execution, hand-wrought. Life is not a paltry tin cup which the child drains dry, leaving the man to go weary and hopeless, quaffing at it in vain with black, parched lips. It is a fountain ever springing. It is a great deep, which the wisest has never bounded, the grandest never fathomed.