The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858

Now all I have to do is, not to go to the second-hand slop-shops for the phrase-coat I need for my naked discovery, but look for some unfamiliar robe,—some name more recherché, learned, and transcendental than my neighbors sport,—and then I shall pass muster. The classic togas seem to be the most imposing. The Germans, who weave their names out of their indigenous Saxon roots, are much too naïve. I will get a Greek Lexicon and set about it this very night.

After all, why should it be thought so improbable, in this age of strange phenomena, that the ideas transmitted through the electro-magnetic wire may be communicated to the brain,—especially when there exist certain abnormal or semi-abnormal conditions of that brain and its nerves? Is it not reasonable to suppose that all magnetisms are one in essence? The singular experiences above related seem to hint at the truth of such a view. If it be true that certain delicately-organized persons have the power of telling the character of others, who are entire strangers to them, simply by holding in their hands letters written by those strangers, is it not full as much within the scope of belief that there are those who, under certain physical conditions, may detect the purport of an electro-magnetic message,—that message being sent by vibrations of the wire through the nerves to the brain? If all magnetisms are one in essence,—as I am inclined to believe,—and if the nerves, the brain, and the mind are so swayed by what we term animal magnetism, why not allow for the strong probability of their being also, under certain conditions, equally impressible by electro-magnetism? I put these questions to scientific men; and I do not see why they should be answered by silence or ridicule, merely because the whole subject is veiled in mystery.

It may be asked,—How can an electro-magnetic message be communicated to the mind, without a knowledge of the alphabet used by the telegraphers? This question may seem a poser to some minds. But I don't see that it raises any grave difficulty. I answer the question by asking another:—How can persons in the somnambulic state read with the tops of their heads?

Besides, I once had the telegraph alphabet explained to me by one of the wire-operators,—though I have forgotten it,—and it is possible, that, in my semi-mesmeric condition, the recollection revived, so that I knew that such and such pulsations of the wire stood for such and such letters.

But is there not a certain spiritual significance, also, in these singular experiences here related?

We may safely lay down this doctrine,—a very old and much-thumbed doctrine, but none the less true for all its dog-ears:—No man lives for himself alone. He is related not only to the silent stars and the singing-birds and the sunny landscape, but to every other human soul. You say, This should not be stated so sermonically, but symbolically. That is just what I have been doing in my narrative of the wires.

It gives one a great idea of human communion,—this power of sending these spark-messages thousands of miles in a second. Far more poetical, too,—is it not?—as well as more practical, than tying billets under the wings of carrier-pigeons. It is removing so much time and space out of the way,—those absorbents of spirits,—and bringing mind into close contact with mind. But when one can read these messages without the aid of machinery, by merely touching the wires, how much greater does the symbol become!

All mankind are one. As some philosophers express it,—one great mind includes us all. But then, as it would never do for all minds to be literally one, any more than it would for all magnetisms to be identical in their modes of manifestation, or for all the rivers, creeks, and canals to flow together, so we have our natural barriers and channels, our propriums, as the Swedish seer has it,—and so we live and let live. We feel with others and think with others, but with strict reservations. That evening among the wires, for instance, brought me into wonderful intimate contact with a few of the joys and sorrows of some of my fellow-beings; but an excess of such experiences would interfere with our freedom and our happiness. It is our self-hood, properly balanced, which constitutes our dignity, our humanity. A certain degree, and a very considerable degree of insulation is necessary, that individual life and mental equanimity may go on.

But there may be a degree of insulation which is unbecoming a member of the human family. It may become brutish,—or it may amount to the ridiculous. In Paris, there was an old lady, of uncertain age, who lived in the apartment beneath mine. I think I never saw her but twice. She manifested her existence sometimes by complaining of the romping of the children overhead, who called her the "bonne femme." Why they gave her the name I don't know; for she seemed to have no human ties in the world, and wasted her affections on a private menagerie of parrots, canaries, and poodle-dogs. A few shocks of the electric telegraph might have raised her out of her desert island, and given her some glimpses of the great continents of human love and sympathy.

A man who lives for himself alone sits on a sort of insulated glass stool, with a noli-me-tangere look at his fellow-men, and a shivering dread of some electric shock from contact with them. He is a non-conductor in relation to the great magnetic currents which run pulsing along the invisible wires that connect one heart with another. Preachers, philanthropists, and moralists are in the habit of saying of such a person,—"How cold! how selfish! how unchristian!" I sometimes fancy a citizen of the planet Venus, that social star of evening and morning, might say,—"How absurd!" What a figure he cuts there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,—in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies,—like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,—or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,—shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,—might furnish a subject for a planetary joke not unworthy of translation into the language of our dim earth.

One need not be a lonely bachelor, nor a lonely spinster, in order to live alone. The loneliest are those who mingle with men bodily and yet have no contact with them spiritually. There is no desert solitude equal to that of a crowded city where you have no sympathies. I might here quote Paris again, in illustration,—or, indeed, any foreign city. A friend of mine had an atelier once in the top of a house in the Rue St. Honoré. He knew not a soul in the house nor in the neighborhood. There was a German tailor below, who once made him a pair of pantaloons,—so they were connected sartorically and pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was the concierge below, who knew when he came in and went out,—that was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and the muffled cry of the marchands des légumes, were faintly heard from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could never tell whether child's or woman's, for he never saw any one) overflowed in tones of endearment on some unresponding creature,—he could never guess whether it was a baby, or a bird, or a cat, or a dog, or a lizard, (the French have such pets sometimes,) or an enchanted prince, like that poor half-marble fellow in the "Arabian Nights." In that garret the painter experienced for six months the perfection of Parisian solitude. Now I dare say he or I might have found social sympathies, by hunting them up; but he didn't, and I dare say he was to blame, as I should be in the same situation,—and I am willing to place myself in the same category with the menagerie-loving old lady, above referred to, omitting the feathered and canine pets.

As to my mesmerico-telegraphic discovery, it may pass for what it is worth. I shall submit it at least to my cousin Moses, as soon as he returns from the South. People may believe it or not. People may say it may be of practical use, or not. I shall overhaul my terminologies, and, with the "metaphysical aid" of my cousin, fit it with a scientific name which shall overtop all the ologies.

Having dressed my new Fact in a respectable and scholarlike coat, I shall let him take his chance with the judicious public,—and content myself, for the present, with making him a sort of humble colporteur of the valuable tract on Human Brotherhood of which I have herewith furnished a few dry specimens.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL

The company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in,—so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,—in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.—It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or two.—"Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that island—(or, as it is absurdly written, ile and) water won't mix.—But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,—"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,—is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't,—he made jokes.

I am willing,—I said,—to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous tractate, "De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY."

A LOGICAL STORY  Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay,  That was built in such a logical way  It ran a hundred years to a day,  And then, of a sudden, it–ah, but stay,  I'll tell you what happened without delay,  Scaring the parson into fits,  Frightening people out of their wits,—  Have you ever heard of that, I say?  Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.Georgius Secundus was then alive,—  Snuffy old drone from the German hive!  That was the year when Lisbon-town  Saw the earth open and gulp her down,  And Braddock's army was done so brown,  Left without a scalp to its crown.  It was on the terrible Earthquake-day  That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.  Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,There is always somewhere, a weakest spot,—  In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,  In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,  In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,—lurking still  Find it somewhere you must and will,—  Above or below, or within or without,—  And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out,  But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,")  He would build one shay to beat the taown  'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:  —"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain  Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;  'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,    Is only jest  To make that place uz strong uz the rest."  So the Deacon inquired of the village folk  Where he could find the strongest oak,  That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,—  That was for spokes and floor and sills;  He sent for lancewood to make the thills;  The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;  The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,  But lasts like iron for things like these;  The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"—  Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em,—  Never an axe had seen their chips,  And the wedges flew from between their lips,  Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;  Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,  Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,  Steel of the finest, bright and blue;  Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;  Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide  Found in the pit when the tanner died.  That was the way he "put her through."—  "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"  Do! I tell you, I rather guess  She was a wonder, and nothing less!  Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,  Deacon and deaconess dropped away,  Children and grand-children—where were they?  But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay  As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!  EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;—it came and found  The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.  Eighteen hundred increased by ten;—  "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.  Eighteen hundred and twenty came;—  Running as usual; much the same.  Thirty and forty at last arrive,  And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.  Little of all we value here  Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year  Without both feeling and looking queer.  In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,  So far as I know, but a tree and truth.  (This is a moral that runs at large;  Take it.—You're welcome—No extra charge.)  FIRST OF NOVEMBER,—the Earthquake-day.—  There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay,  A general flavor of mild decay,  But nothing local, as one may say.  There couldn't be,—for the Deacon's art  Had made it so like in every part  That there wasn't a chance for one to start.  For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,  And the floor was just as strong as the sills,  And the panels just as strong as the floor,  And the whippletree neither less nor more,  And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,And spring and axle and hub encore.And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubtIn another hour it will be worn out!  First of November, 'Fifty-five!  This morning the parson takes a drive.  Now, small boys, get out of the way!  Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay,  Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.  "Huddup!" said the parson.—Off went they.  The parson was working his Sunday's text,—Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed  At what the—Moses—was coming next.  All at once the horse stood still,  Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.  —First a shiver, and then a thrill,  Then something decidedly like a spill,—  And the parson was sitting upon a rock,  At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house-clock,—  Just the hour of the Earthquake-shock!  —What do you think the parson found,  When he got up and stared around?  The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,  As if it had been to the mill and ground!  You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,  How it went to pieces all at once,—  All at once, and nothing first,—  Just as bubbles do when they burst.  End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.  Logic is logic. That's all I say.

—I think there is one habit,—I said to our company a day or two afterwards,—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,—fast or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate.

–—The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.

–—I replied with my usual forbearance.—Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because a or b is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation, (as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle—bored. I have seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word—slow. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough,—on one condition.

–—What is that, Sir?—said the divinity-student.

–—That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers were his best officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in English the other day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any scarabaeus criticus would add this to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers,—which he didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London language, and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the same). A good many powerful and dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the "curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would be called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of whom you have heard,—a philosopher, in short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and is now going to take a generation or more to learn over again. Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius: and though he lost his game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes,—a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,—aye, and left it swinging to this day.—Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit. Elegans "nascitur, non fit." A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out collars—(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are tournures nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different styles of dandyism.

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this country,—not a gratiâ-Dei, nor a jure-divino one,—but a de-facto upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of common life as the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our wharves,—very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms a race,—I don't mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, back streets; it buys country-places to give them happy and healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market–I beg your pardon,—that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens among them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The physical character of the next generation rises in consequence. It is plain that certain families have in this way acquired an elevated type of face and figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may sometimes find models of both sexes which one of the rural counties would find it hard to match from all its townships put together. Because there is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not overlook the equally obvious fact I have just spoken of,—which in one or two generations more will be, I think, much more patent than just now.