Lessons in Life

Part 1

Produced by Distributed Proofreaders

LESSONS IN LIFE.

A SERIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS.

TIMOTHY TITCOMB, AUTHOR OF "LETTERS TO THE YOUNG," "GOLD-FOIL," ETC.

PREFACE.

The quick and cordial reception which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be--and probably is--unnecessary for the author to say that in this book, as in its predecessors, he has aimed to be neither brilliant nor profound. He has endeavored, simply, to treat in a familiar and attractive way a few of the more prominent questions which concern the life of every thoughtful man and woman. Indeed, he can hardly pretend to have done more than to organize, and put into form, the average thinking of those who read his books--to place before the people the sum of their own choicer judgments--and he neither expects nor wishes for these essays higher praise than that which accords to them the quality of common sense.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., November, 1861.

CONTENTS.

LESSON I. MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND LESSON II. BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS LESSON III. ANIMAL CONTENT LESSON IV. REPRODUCTION IN KIND LESSON V. TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS LESSON VI. MISTAKES OF PENANCE LESSON VII. THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN LESSON VIII. AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION LESSON IX. PERVERSENESS LESSON X. UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES LESSON XI. GREATNESS IN LITTLENESS LESSON XII. RURAL LIFE LESSON XIII. REPOSE LESSON XIV. THE WAYS OF CHARITY LESSON XV. MEN OF ONE IDEA LESSON XVI. SHYING PEOPLE LESSON XVII. FAITH IN HUMANITY LESSON XVIII. SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS LESSON XIX. THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE LESSON XX. UNNECESSARY BURDENS LESSON XXI. PROPER PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE LESSON XXII. THE POETIC TEST LESSON XXIII. THE FOOD OF LIFE LESSON XXIV. HALF-FINISHED WORK

LESSONS IN LIFE.

LESSON I.

MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND.

"That blessed mood In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened." WORDSWORTH.

"Oh, blessed temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day." POPE.

"My heart and mind and self, never in tune; Sad for the most part, then in such a flow Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon." LEIGH HUNT.

It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning. I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence, across the street. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile, and get warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of strength, or warmth, or inspiration, or something or other not easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood.

It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard, and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet-faced girl was my teacher; and I presume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite as severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the birds were singing everywhere; and the thought came to me, that if I could only stay out of doors, and lie down in the shadow of a tree, I could get my lesson. I begged the privilege of trying the experiment. The kind heart that presided over the school-room could not resist my petition; so I was soon lying in the coveted shadow. I went to work very severely; but the next moment found my eyes wandering; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up and down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless dissipation to sit under the tree; and discovering a huge rock on the hillside, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there might be in a shadow not produced by foliage. Seated under the brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the dim-looking text, but it had become utterly meaningless; and a musical cricket under the rock would have put me to sleep if I had permitted myself to remain. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me help; but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, and spanning it, a little bridge where I had been accustomed to sit, hanging my feet over the water, and angling for minnows. It seemed as if the bridge and the water might do something for me, and, in a few minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat. There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of the clear, cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fanning the sand with his slow fins, and minding nothing about me at all. What could a boy do with Colburn's First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and nearly as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the tinkle of a distant bell startled me, and I startled the trout, and fish and vision faded before the terrible consciousness that I knew less of my lesson than I did when I left the school-house.

This has always been my fortune when running after, or looking for, moods. There is a popular hallucination that makes of authors a romantic people who are entirely dependent upon moods and moments of inspiration for the power to labor in their peculiar way. Authors are supposed to write when they "feel like it," and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bottle at his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through the brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who are seized suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at midnight, and are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some way. We are told of very delicate girls who carry pencils and cards with them, to take the names and address of such angels as may visit them in out-of-the-way places. We read of poets who go on long sprees, and after recovery retire to their rooms and work night and day, eating not and sleeping little, and in some miraculous way producing wonderful literary creations. The mind of a literary man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, that turns a mill. There is no water except when it rains, and the weather being very fickle, it is never known when there will be water. Sometimes, however, there comes a freshet, and then the mill runs night and day, until the water subsides, and another dry time comes on.

Now, while I am aware, as every writer must be, that the brain works very much better at some times than it does at others, I can declare without reservation, that no man who depends upon moods for the power to write can possibly accomplish much. I know men who rely upon their moods, alike for the disposition and the ability to write, but they are, without exception, lazy and inefficient men. They never have accomplished much, and they never will accomplish much. Regular eating, regular sleeping, regular working--these are the secrets of all true literary success. A man may throw off a single little poem by a spasm, but he cannot write a poem of three thousand lines by spasms. Spasms that produce poems like this, must last from five to seven hours a day, through six days of every week, and four weeks of every month, until the work shall be finished. There is no good reason why the mind will not do its best by regular exercise and usage. The mower starts in the morning with a lame back and with aching joints; but he keeps on mowing, and the glow rises, and the perspiration starts, and he becomes interested in his labor, and, at length, he finds himself at work with full efficiency. He was not in the mood for mowing when he began, but mowing brought its own mood, and he knew it would when he began. The mind is sometimes lame in the morning. It refuses to go to work. Our wills seem entirely insufficient to drive it to its tasks; but if it be driven to its work and held to it persistently, and held thus every day, it will ultimately be able to do its best every day. A man who works his brains for a living, must work them just as regularly as the omnibus-driver does his horses.

Continue reading Lessons in Life free in the Wunder reader →