第12章

Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as he sat at meat.Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off place, you forget what the true fact of it was,--that those were real dinners, where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a very miscellaneous company.Probably there was a great deal of loose talk among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may believe.

Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,--and I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its being the grand specific against dull dinners.A score of people come together in all moods of mind and body.The problem is, in the space of one hour, more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly exalted life.Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk, alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just where it was whenThe conscious water saw its Lord and blushed,--when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to more than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine.Ionce wrote a song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences.

--The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.--Can you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once, of which the following is a verse?

Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair The joys of the banquet to chasten and share!

Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!

I did,--I answered.--What are you going to do about it?--I will tell you another line I wrote long ago:--Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply true.

The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface.It is hard work to resist this grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance.Better eternal and universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches!

Yet better even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.

Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for Iowe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the "Autocrat,"--which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word which gives it its significance,--the word fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image.Now I will not explain any farther, still less defend, and least of all attack, but simply quote a few lines from one of my friend's poems, printed more than ten years ago, and ask the distinguished gentleman where he has ever asserted more strongly or absolutely the independent will of the "subcreative centre," as my heretical friend has elsewhere called man.

--Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!

--Made in His image, thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.

--Think not too meanly of thy low estate;Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!

If he will look a little closely, he will see that the profile and the full-face views of the will are both true and perfectly consistent!

Now let us come back, after this long digression, to the conversation with the intelligent Englishman.We begin skirmishing with a few light ideas,--testing for thoughts,--as our electro-chemical friend, De Sauty, if there were such a person, would test for his current;trying a little litmus-paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric-paper for alkalies, as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging the lead, and looking at the shells and sands it brings up to find out whether we are like to keep in shallow water, or shall have to drop the deep-sea line;--in short, seeing what we have to deal with.

If the Englishman gets his H's pretty well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the British social order, and we shall find him a good companion.

But, after all, here is a great fact between us.We belong to two different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall to talk through.Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think Iwould let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks.They are children to us in certain points of view.They are playing with toys we have done with for whole-generations.

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