Part 29

This trait of character is directly allied to envy on the one hand and to slander on the other. Envy incites in us a desire to possess the good fortune that we discover falling to others. Meddling is satisfied when it discovers all the minutiæ of others' affairs, and may be so utterly devoid of energy as to care but little whether it can acquire the good or not. Meddling is directly incited by egotism; for that unfortunately leads not only to undue confidence in one's own abilities, but, what is worse, to a feeling that you are a little better able to attend to the affairs of others than they themselves.

Slander, too, oft takes its rise in the curious busyings of those who are interfering where there is no call for their services. There is such a tendency in human nature to flaunt abroad the faults of others, that no sooner does one who systematically intermeddles, discover some failing—and he or she is sure to do this, since it is human to err—than they straightway hasten to lay before others the fruits of their investigations. And thus is given to the public the petty defects of some home life, which, by constant repetition, soon assumes gigantic size, as snow-balls rolled over and over by boys; and so, at length, the happiness of some home circle is destroyed by the malicious and poison-giving officiousness of busybodies.

Neglecting our own affairs and meddling with those of others is the source of many troubles. Those who blow the coals of others' strife may chance to have the sparks fly in their own face. We think more of ourselves than of others, but sometimes more for others than ourselves. People are often incited to meddling by the desire of having "something to tell;" but, if you notice, they are but narrow-minded and ignorant people, who talk about persons and not things. Mere gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the refined should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves of all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it; neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Be on your guard against contracting so pernicious a habit.

A person who constantly meddles means to do harm, and is not sorry to find he has succeeded. He is a treacherous supplanter and underminer of the peace of all families and societies. This being a maxim of unfailing truth, that nobody ever pries into another man's concerns but with a design to do, or to be able to do, him a mischief. His tongue, like the tails of Samson's foxes, carries firebrands, and is enough to set the whole field of the world in a flame. To meddle with another's privileges and prerogatives is vexatious; to meddle with his interests is injurious; to meddle with his good name unites and aggravates both evils.

There is, perhaps, not a more odious character in the world than a go-between, by which we mean the creature who carries to the ear of one neighbor every injurious observation that happens to drop from the mouth of another. Such a person is the slanderer's herald, and is altogether more odious than the slanderer himself. By this vile officiousness he makes that poison effective which else would be inert; for three-fourths of the slanderers in the world would never injure their object except by the malice of go-betweens, who, under the mask of a double friendship, act the part of a double traitor. The less business a man has of his own, the more he attends to the business of his neighbors.

Do not cultivate curiosity; every man has in his own life follies enough, in his own mind troubles enough, in the performance of his own duties difficulties enough, without being curious about the affairs of others. Of all the faculties of the human mind, curiosity is that which is most fruitful or the most barren in effective results, according as it is well or badly directed. The curiosity of an honorable man willingly rests where the love of truth does not urge it further onward, and the love of his neighbor bids it stop. In other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward and charity cries halt. But the busybody in others' affairs is not apt to hold his curiosity in such reasonable limits. The slightest appearance of mystery is sufficient to incite them to great exertions in endeavor to gratify a curiosity as idle as it is useless, and entirely out of his business.

A meddler in the affairs of others is seldom moved by the spirit of charity. He is not curious to discover where he can lend a hand of assistance. If such were the case, it were a trait to be admired rather than despised; but, allied as it is to envy and slander, to idle curiosity and inquisitiveness, it can but be detested by all honest seekers for others' good, and shunned by the truly enlightened and refined. And if one would be honored and respected, he will strive to be as free from the spirit of meddling as possible. He will relegate that to the low and frivolous, and respect himself too highly to be classed among them.

Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man. It affects nothing it sets about, and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than the other against whom it is directed.

The disadvantages arising from anger, which are its unfailing concomicants under all circumstances, should prove a panacea for the complaint. In moments of cool reflection the man who indulges it views with a deep disgust the desolation wrought by passion. Friendship, domestic happiness, self-respect, the esteem of others, are swept away as by a whirlwind, and one brief fit of anger sometimes suffices to lay in wreck the home happiness which years have been cementing together. What crimes have not been committed in the paroxysms of anger! Has not the friend murdered his friend? the son massacred his parent? the creature blasphemed his Creator. When, indeed, the nature of this passion is considered what crimes may it not commit? Is it not the storm of the human mind which wrecks every better affection—wrecks reason and conscience, and, as a ship driven without helm or compass before the rushing gale, is not the mind borne away without guide or government by the tempest of unbounded rage?

To be angry about trifles is low and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils. The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting future debts in his passionate moments which he may have to pay in the future, and when it is most inconvenient to make payment. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, in injury and reparation; for anger begins in folly, but ends in repentance. Anger may be looked for in the character of weak-minded people, children not yet learned to govern themselves, and those who, for any reason, are not expected to have full command over their faculties; but no sensible man or woman in the full possession of their powers will suffer the degradation of allowing themselves to be overcome by anger without afterwards experiencing the utmost mortification.

A passionate temper renders a man unfit for advice, deprives him of his reason, robs him of all that is really great or noble in his nature; it makes him unfit for conversation, destroys friendship, changes justice into cruelty, and turns all order into confusion. Man was born to reason, to reflection, and to do all things quietly and in order. Anger takes from him this prerogative, transforms his manship into childish petulance, his reasoning powers into brute instinct. Consider, then, how much more you often suffer from your anger than from those things for which you are angry. Consider, further, whether that for which you give way to angry outbreaks is any fit compensation whatever for the degradation and loss you suffer by giving way to passion.

No man is obliged to live so free from passion as not to show some sentiment; on fit occasions it were rather stoical stupidity than virtue to do otherwise. There are times and occasions when the expression of indignation is not only justifiable but necessary. We are bound to be indignant at falsehood, selfishness, and cruelty. A man of true feeling fires up naturally at baseness or meanness of any sort, even in cases where he may be under no obligation to speak out. But then his anger is as reasonable in its outward expression as in its origin.

We must, however, be careful how we indulge in virtuous indignation. It is the handsome brother of anger and hatred. Anger may glance into the breast of a wise man, but rests only in the bosom of fools. A wise man hath no more anger than is necessary to show that he can apprehend the first wrong, nor any more revenge than justly to prevent a second.

If anger proceeds from a great cause it turns to fury; if from a small cause it is peevishness; and so it is always either terrible or ridiculous. Sinful anger, when it becomes strong, is called wrath; when it makes outrage it is fury; when it becomes fixed it is termed hatred; and when it intends to injure any one it is called malice. All these wicked passions spring from anger. The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but conceals us from ourselves, and we injure our own cause in the eyes of the world when we too passionately and eagerly defend it.

There is many a man whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could only govern his tongue. He is the man of power who controls the storms and tempests of his mind. How sweet the serenity of habitual self-control! How many stinging self-reproaches it spares us! When does a man feel more at ease with himself than when he has passed through a sudden and strong provocation without speaking a word, or in undisturbed good humor? When, on the contrary, does he feel a deeper humiliation than when he is conscious that anger has made him betray himself? How many there are who check passion with passion, and are very angry in reproving anger! Thus to lay one devil they raise another, and leave more work to be done than they found undone. Such a reproof of anger is a vice to be reproved. Reproof either hardens or softens its object. The sword of reproof should be drawn against the offense and not against the offender.

It is not falling in the water, but remaining in it, that drowns a man. So it is not the possession of a strong and hasty temper, but the submission to it, that produces the evils incident to anger. In no other way does a man show genuine nobility more than in resolutely holding his temper subject to reason. In no other way can he so effectually attain success, for a strong temper indicates a good amount of energy; passion serves to dissipate this, so that its good effects are not perceived; whereas, under the guiding reins of self-control, this energy is gathered into a "central glow," which renders success in any predetermined line not only a possibility but a very probable sequence.

There is a large element of deception in all ambitious schemes, for ofttimes, when at the summit of ambition, one is at the depths of despair, and the showy results of a successful pursuit of ambition are sometimes but gilded misery, the casing of despair. The history of ambition is written in characters of blood. It may be designated as one of the vices of small minds, illiberal and unacquainted with mankind. It is a solitary vice. The road ambition travels is too narrow for friendship, too crooked for love, too rugged for honesty, too dark for science, and too hilly for happiness.

Those who pursue ambition as a means of happiness awake to a far different reality. The wear and tear of hearts is never recompensed. It steals away the freshness of life; it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments; it shuts our souls to our own youth, and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years. The happiness promised by ambition dissolves in sorrow just as we are about to grasp it. It makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means of happiness, but she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

A thoroughly ambitious man will never make a true friend, for he who makes ambition his god tramples upon every thing else. What cares he if in his onward march he treads upon the hearts of those who love him best. In his eyes your only value lies in the use you may be to him. Personally one is nothing to him. If you are not rich or famous or powerful enough to advance his interests, after he has got above you he cares no more for you. It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breast, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouth; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their interests, and to make a good countenance without the help of a good will.

If, as one says, "ambition is but a shadow's shadow," it were well to remember that a shadow, wherever it passes, leaves a track behind. It would conduce to humility also to remember that of the greatest personages in the world when once they are dead there remains no monument of their selfish ambition except the empty renown of their boasted name. It is a very indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares so much about fame, about what the world will say of us, to be always looking in the faces of others for approval, to be always anxious about the effect of what we do or say, to be always shouting to hear the echo of our own voices. To be famous? What does this profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours?

The desire to be thought well of, to desire to be great in goodness, is in itself a noble quality of the mind, and is often termed ambition, though it lacks the element of selfishness which renders ambition so odious to all right-minded people. It seems an abuse of language to confound such a trait of the mind with ambition. It were better to call it aspiration, which becomes ambition only when carried to an extreme, or when the objects for the attainment of which ambition incites us to put forth our utmost exertions are unworthy the attention of sentient moral beings, who live not only for time, but for eternity. A worthy aspiration may be a great incentive to advancement and civilization, a great teacher to morality and wisdom; but an unworthy ambition, unworthy because of its ends or the zeal with which they are pursued, is often the instrument of crime and iniquity, the instigator of intemperance and rashness.

Ambition is an excessive quality, and, as such, is apt to lead us to the most extraordinary results. If our ambition leads us to excel or seek to excel in that which is good, the currents it may induce us to support will be none but legitimate ones. But if it is stimulated by pride, envy, avariciousness, or vanity, we will confine our support principally to the counter currents of life, and thus leave behind us misery and destruction. An ambition to appear to be thought great in noble qualities may lead us to appear good; but where we only act from ambition, and not from aspiration, we are subject to fall at any moment, since it were vain to expect selfishness to long continue in any right action.

If it is our ambition to gain distinction, we will rob the weak and flatter the strong, and become the fawning slave of those who are able to foist us above our betters, and deck us with the titles and honors of the great without any regard to our own merit of respectability. But if we are ambitious to do good, without any regard for the fame we may win or the praise we may command, our course will be honorable and just, our acts and deeds most worthy and good. When we have done with the world the prints of our worthy ambition will still remain as a legacy to those who come after us to enjoy and reap the benefits, for which they will revere our memory, and retain our names in the lists of those whose labors have aided in enriching the world and exalting the general interests of mankind.

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, of place, of ceremonial respects and civil pageantry is as vain and little as the things are which we court. Much of the advancement of the world can be traced to the efforts of those who were moved by ambition to become famous. Like fire, ambition is an excellent servant, but a poor master. As long as it is held subservient to integrity and honor, and made to conform to the requirements of justice, there is but little danger of a man's having too much of it. But, beware! it is such an insatiate passion that you must be continually on your guard lest it speedily become the ruling principle of your being.

Among the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to worldly success, there is no one the importance of which is more real, yet which is more generally underrated at this day by the young, than courtesy—that feeling of kindness, of love for our fellows, which expresses itself in pleasing manners. Owing to that spirit of self-reliance and self-assertion, they are too apt to despise those nameless and exquisite tendernesses of thought and manner that mark the true gentleman. Yet history is crowded with examples showing that, as in literature it is the delicate, indefinable charm of style, not the thought, that makes a work immortal, so it is the bearing of a man towards his fellows that ofttimes, more than any other circumstance, promotes or obstructs his advancement in life.

Manner has a great deal to do with the estimation in which men are held by the world; and it has often more influence in the government of others than qualities of much greater depth and substance. We may complain that our fellow-men are more for form than substance, for the superficial rather than the solid contents of a man, but the fact remains, and it is a clew to many of the seeming anomalies and freaks of fortune which surprise us in the matter of worldly prosperity. The success or failure of one's plans have often turned upon the address and manner of the man. Though there are a few people who can look beyond the rough husk or shell of a fellow-being to the finer qualities hidden within, yet the vast majority, not so keen-visaged nor tolerant, judge a person by his outward bearings and conduct.

Grace, agreeable manners, and fascinating powers are one thing, while politeness is another. The two points are often mistaken in the occasional meeting, but the true gentleman always rises to the surface at last. Nothing will develop a spirit of true politeness except a mind imbued with goodness, justness, and generosity. Manners are different in every country; but true politeness is every-where the same. Manners which take up so much of our attention are only artificial helps which ignorance assumes in order to imitate politeness, which is the result of much good sense, some good-nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, but with no design of obtaining the same indulgence from them. A person possessed of those qualities, though he had never seen a court, is truly agreeable; and if without them would continue a clown, though he had been all his life a gentleman usher.

He is truly well-bred who knows when to value and when to despise those national peculiarities which are regarded by some with so much observance. A traveler of taste at once perceives that the wise are polite all the world over, but that fools are polite only at home. Since circumstances always alter cases, the polite man must know when to violate the conventional forms which common practice has established, and when to respect them. To be a slave to any set code of actions is as bad as to despise them. Perceptiveness, adaptation, penetration, and a happy faculty of suiting manners to circumstances, is one of the principles upon which one must work; for the etiquette of the drawing-room differs from that of the office or railroad-car, and what may be downright rudeness in one case may be gentility in the other.