Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862», страница 4

Doctor Eaton had not seen me, for I stood in the shadow of the bed behind him.

"Who will stay with your sister tonight?" he asked Mr. Axtell.

Mr. Axtell looked around at me, as if expecting that I would answer; and I presented myself for the office.

"You look scarcely fit," was the village-physician's somewhat ungracious comment; and his eyes said, what his lips dared not,–"Who are you?"

"I think you'll find me so, if you try me."

Miss Axtell had gone away again, and neither saw nor heeded me.

"Will you come below?"–and the doctor looked at me as he went out.

I followed him. In the library he shut the door, sat down near the table, took from his pocket a small phial containing a light brown powder, and, dividing a piece of paper into the minute scraps needful, made a deposit in each from the phial, and then, folding over the bits of paper, handed them to me.

"Are you accustomed to take care of sick persons?" he asked.

"Not much; but I am a physician's daughter. I have a little experience."

"Are you a visitor here?"

"No,–at the parsonage."

A pair of quick gray eyes danced out at me from under browy cliffs clothed with a ledge of lashes, in an actually startling manner. I didn't think the man had so much of life in him.

"You're Mrs. Wilton's sister, perhaps."

"I am."

"Give her one of these every half-hour, till she falls asleep."

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't let her talk; but she won't, though. If she gets incoherent,–says wild things,–talks of what you can't understand,–send for me; I live next door."

"Is this all for her?"

"Enough. Do you know her?"

"I never saw her until to-night."

"The brother? Monstrous fellow."

"Until to-day."

"Look up there."

"Where?"

"On the wall."

"At what?"

There were several paintings hanging there.

"The face, of course."

"I can't see it very well."

Shadows were upon it, and the lampshade was on.

"Then I'll take this off"; and Doctor Eaton removed the shade, letting the light up to the wall.

"A young girl's face," I said.

The doctor was looking at me, and not at the painting there. A little bit of confusion came,–I don't know why.

"Do you like it?" I ventured.

"I like it? I'm not the one to like it."

"Somebody does, then?"

"Of course. What did he paint it for, if he didn't like it?"

"I do not know of whom you are talking, at all," I said, a little vexed at this information-no-information style.

"You don't?" in a voice of the utmost astonishment.

"No. Is this all, for the sick lady? I think I ought to go to her."

"Of course you ought. It's a sad thing, this death in the house"; and Doctor Eaton picked up his hat, and opened the door.

Kate was waiting in the hall.

"Mr. Abraham thinks you'd better look in and see if it's well to have any watchers in there, before you go," she said.

"Well, light me in, then, Katie. You wait in there, if you please, Miss," to me; and I saw the two go to the front-room on the right.

A waft of something, it may have been the air that came out of that room, sent me back from the hall, and I shut the door behind me. It was several minutes before they came back. In the interim I had taken a long look at the face on the wall. It seemed too young to be very beautiful, and I couldn't help wishing that the artist had waited a year or two, until a little more of the outline of life had come to it; yet it was a sweet, loving face, with a brow as low and cool as Sophie's own, only it hadn't any shadow of an Aaron on it. I didn't hear the door open, I hadn't heard the sound of living thing, when some one said, close to me, as I was standing looking up at the face I've spoken of,–

"What are you doing?"

It was Mr. Axtell, and the voice was a prickly one.

"Is there any harm?" I said. "I'm only looking here,"–pointing to where my eyes had been before. "Who painted it?"

"An unknown, poor painter."

"Was he poor in spirit?"

"He is now, I trust."

A man that has variant voices is a cruel thing in this world, because one cannot help their coming in at some one of the gates of the heart, which cannot all be guarded at the same moment. "Poor in spirit?" "He is now, I trust." I felt decidedly vexed at this man before me for having such tones in his voice.

"Can I go up to Miss Axtell now?" I asked.

"In a moment, when Kate has shown Doctor Eaton out."

I picked up my powders and my illustrious book, and waited.

Kate came.

"The doctor says there's no need," she said, in her laconic way.

Kate, I afterwards learned, was the daughter of the farmer that Sophie heard Miss Axtell consoling for the loss of his wife, one day.

MY DAPHNE

 
My budding Daphne wanted scope
To bourgeon all her flowers of hope.
 
 
She felt a cramp around her root
That crippled every outmost shoot.
 
 
I set me to the kindly task;
I found a trim and tidy cask,
 
 
Shapely and painted; straightway seized
The timely waif; and, quick released
 
 
From earthen bound and sordid thrall,
My Daphne sat there, proud and tall.
 
 
Stately and tall, like any queen,
She spread her farthingale of green;
 
 
Nor stinted aught with larger fate,
For that she was innately great.
 
 
I learned, in accidental way,
A secret, on an after-day,–
 
 
A chance that marked the simple change
As something ominous and strange.
 
 
And so, therefrom, with anxious care,
Almost with underthought of prayer,
 
 
As, day by day, my listening soul
Waited to catch the coming roll
 
 
Of pealing victory, that should bear
My country's triumph on the air,–
 
 
I tended gently all the more
The plant whose life a portent bore.
 
 
The weary winter wore away,
And still we waited, day by day;
 
 
And still, in full and leafy pride,
My Daphne strengthened at my side,
 
 
Till her fair buds outburst their bars,
And whitened gloriously to stars!
 
 
Above each stalwart, loyal stem
Rested their heavenly diadem,
 
 
And flooded forth their incense rare,
A breathing Joy, upon the air!
 
 
Well might my backward thought recall
The cramp, the hindrance, and the thrall,
 
 
The strange release to larger space,
The issue into growth and grace,
 
 
And joyous hail the homely sign
That so had spelled a hope divine!
 
 
For all this life, and light, and bloom,
This breath of Peace that blessed the room,
 
 
Was born from out the banded rim,
Once crowded close, and black, and grim,
 
 
With grains that feed the Cannon's breath,
And boom his sentences of death!
 

CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE

"On the whole, it was very disagreeable," wrote a certain great traveller and hunter, summing up an account of his position, as he composed himself to rest upon a certain evening after a hard day's work. And no doubt it must have been very disagreeable. The night was cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,–each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth which was wrapped up to serve as a pillow, appeared to indicate that a snake was wriggling about underneath it. The hunter had some ground for thinking that it was a very venomous one, as indeed in the morning it proved to be; but he was too tired to look. And speaking of the general condition of matters upon that evening, the hunter stated, with great mildness of language, that "it was very disagreeable."

Most readers would be disposed to say that disagreeable was hardly the right word. No doubt, all things that are perilous, horrible, awful, ghastly, deadly, and the like, are disagreeable too. But when we use the word disagreeable by itself, our meaning is understood to be, that in calling the thing disagreeable we have said the worst of it. A long and tiresome sermon is disagreeable; but a venomous snake under your pillow passes beyond being disagreeable. To have a tooth stopped is disagreeable; to be broken on the wheel (though nobody could like it) transcends that. If a thing be horrible and awful, you would not say it was disagreeable. The greater includes the less: as when a human being becomes entitled to write D.D. after his name, he drops all mention of the M.A. borne in preceding years.

Let this truth be remembered, by such as shall read the following pages. We are to think about disagreeable people. Let it be understood that (speaking generally) we are to think of people who are no worse than disagreeable. It cannot be denied, even by the most prejudiced, that murderers, pirates, slave-drivers, and burglars, are disagreeable. The cut-throat, the poisoner, the sneaking black-guard who shoots his landlord from behind a hedge, are no doubt disagreeable people,–so very disagreeable that in this country the common consent of mankind removes them from human society by the instrumentality of a halter. But disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all that, and a great deal more. And accordingly they stand beyond the range of this dissertation. We are to treat of folk who are disagreeable, and not worse than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, overstep the boundary-line. But it is to be remembered that there are people who in the main are good people, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And a further complication is introduced into the subject by the fact, that some people who are far from good are yet unquestionably agreeable. You disapprove them; but you cannot help liking them. Others, again, are substantially good; yet you are angry with yourself to find that you cannot like them.

I take for granted that all observant human beings will admit that in this world there are disagreeable people. Probably the distinction which presses itself most strongly upon our attention, as we mingle in the society of our fellow-men, is the distinction between agreeable people and disagreeable. There are various tests, more or less important, which put all mankind to right and left. A familiar division is into rich and poor. Thomas Paine, with great vehemence, denied the propriety of that classification, and declared that the only true and essential classification of mankind is into male and female. I have read a story whose author maintained, that, to his mind, by far the most interesting and thorough division of our race is into such as have been hanged and such as have not been hanged: he himself belonging to the former class. But we all, more or less, recognize and act upon the great classification of all human beings into the agreeable and the disagreeable. And we begin very early to recognize and act upon it. Very early in life, the little child understands and feels the vast difference between people who are nice and people who are not nice. In school-boy days, the first thing settled as to any new acquaintance, man or boy, is on which side he stands of the great boundary-line. It is not genius, not scholarship, not wisdom, not strength nor speed, that fixes the man's place. None of these things is chiefly looked to: the question is, Is he agreeable or disagreeable? And according as that question is decided, the man is described, in the forcible language of youth, as "a brick," or as "a beast."

Yet it is to be remembered that the division between the agreeable and disagreeable of mankind is one which may be transcended. It is a scratch on the earth,–not a ten-foot wall. And you will find men who pass from one side of it to the other, and back again,–probably several times in a week, or even in a day. There are people whom you never know where to have. They are constantly skipping from side to side of that line of demarcation; or they even walk along with a foot on each side of it. There are people who are always disagreeable, and disagreeable to all men. There are people who are agreeable at some times, and disagreeable at others. There are people who are agreeable to some men, and disagreeable to other men. I do not intend by the last-named class people who intentionally make themselves agreeable to a certain portion of the race, to which they think it worth while to make themselves agreeable, and who do not take that trouble in the case of the remainder of humankind. What I mean is this: that there are people who have such an affinity and sympathy with certain other people, who so suit certain other people, that they are agreeable to these other people, though perhaps not particularly so to the race at large. And exceptional tastes and likings are often the strongest. The thing you like enthusiastically another man absolutely loathes. The thing which all men like is for the most part liked with a mild and subdued liking. Everybody likes good and well-made bread; but nobody goes into raptures over it. Few persons like caviare; but those who do like it are very fond of it. I never knew but one being who liked mustard with apple-pie; but that solitary man ate it with avidity, and praised the flavor with enthusiasm.

But it is impossible to legislate for every individual case. Every rule must have exceptions from it; but it would be foolish to resolve to lay down no more rules. There may be, somewhere, the man who likes Mr. Snarling; and to that man Mr. Snarling would doubtless be agreeable. But for practical purposes Mr. Snarling may justly be described as a disagreeable man, if he be disagreeable to nine hundred and ninety-nine mortals out of every thousand. And with precision sufficient for the ordinary business of life we may say that there are people who are essentially disagreeable.

There are people who go through life, leaving an unpleasant influence on all whom they come near. You are not at your ease in their society. You feel awkward and constrained while with them. That is probably the mildest degree in the scale of unpleasantness. There are people who disseminate a much worse influence. As the upas-tree was said to blight all the country round it, so do these disagreeable folk prejudicially affect the whole surrounding moral atmosphere. They chill all warmth of heart in those near them; they put down anything generous or magnanimous; they suggest unpleasant thoughts and associations; they excite a diverse and numerous array of bad tempers. The great evil of disagreeable people lies in this: that they tend powerfully to make other people disagreeable too. And these people are not necessarily bad people, though they produce a bad effect. It is not certain that they design to be disagreeable. There are those who do entertain that design; and they always succeed in carrying it out. Nobody ever tried diligently to be disagreeable, and failed. Such persons may, indeed, inflict much less annoyance than they wished; they may even fail of inflicting any pain whatever on others; but they make themselves as disgusting as they could desire. And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,–particularly if the latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are those who worry and torment you. It is through want of perception,–want of tact,–coarseness of nature,–utter lack of power to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,–and did a fussy host or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did that person time after time return to the charge, till you would have liked to poison him? There is nothing more disagreeable, and few things more mischievous, than a well-meaning, meddling fool. And where there was no special intention, good or bad, towards yourself, you have known people make you uncomfortable through the simple exhibition to you, and pressure upon you, of their own inherent disagreeableness. You have known people after talking to whom for a while you felt disgusted with everything, and above all, with those people themselves. Talking to them, you felt your moral nature being rubbed against the grain, being stung all over with nettles. You showed your new house and furniture to such a man, and with eagle eye he traced out and pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint, and every flaw in your oak and walnut; he showed you that there were corners of your big mirrors that distorted your face,–that there were bits of your grand marble mantel-pieces that might be expected soon to scale away. Or you have known a man who, with no evil intention, made it his practice to talk of you before your face as your other friends are accustomed to talk of you behind your back. It need not be said that the result is anything but pleasant. "What a fool you were, Smith, in saying that at Snooks's last night!" your friend exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit) of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with "What a fool you were." Let me offer the like advice as to sentences which set out as follows:–"I say, Smith, I think your brother is the greatest fool on the face of the earth." Stop that kind of thing, my friend; or you may come to be classed with Mr. Snarling. You are probably a manly fellow, and a sincere friend; and for the sake of your substantial good qualities, one would stand a great deal. But over-frankness is disagreeable; and if you make over-frankness your leading characteristic, of course your entire character will come to be disagreeable, and you will be a disagreeable person.

Besides the people who are disagreeable through malignant intention, and through deficiency of sensitiveness, there are other people who are disagreeable through pure ill-luck. It is quite certain that there are people whom evil fortune dogs through all their life, who are thoroughly and hopelessly unlucky. And in no respect have we beheld a man's ill-luck so persecute him as in the matter of making him (without the slightest evil purpose, and even when he is most anxious to render himself agreeable) render himself extremely disagreeable. Of course there must be some measure of thoughtlessness and forgetfulness,–some lack of that social caution, so indispensable in the complication of modern society, which teaches a man (so to speak) to try if the ice will bear him before venturing his entire weight upon it,–about people who are unlucky in the way of which I am speaking. But doubtless you have known persons who were always saying disagreeable things, or putting disagreeable questions,–either through forgetfulness of things which they ought to have remembered, or through unhappily chancing on forbidden ground. You will find a man, a thoughtless, but quite good-natured man, begin at a dinner-table to relate a succession of stories very much to the prejudice of somebody, while somebody's daughter is sitting opposite him. And you will find the man quite obtuse to all the hints by which the host or hostess tries to stop him, and going on to particulars worse and worse, till, in terror of what all this might grow to, the hostess has to exclaim, "Mr. Smith, you won't take a hint: that is Mr. Somebody's daughter sitting opposite you." It is quite essential that any man, whose conversation consists mainly of observations not at all to the advantage of some absent acquaintance, should carefully feel his way before giving full scope to his malice and his invention, in the presence of any general company. And before making any playful reference to halters, you should be clear that you are not talking to a man whose grandfather was hanged. Nor should you venture any depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from the ranks, unless you are tolerably versed in the family-history of those to whom you are talking. You may have heard a man very jocular upon lunatic-asylums, to another who had several brothers and sisters in one. And though in some cases human beings may render themselves disagreeable through a combination of circumstances which really absolves them from all blame, yet, as a general rule, the man who is disagreeable through ill-luck is at least guilty of culpable carelessness.

* * * * *

You have probably, my reader, known people who had the faculty of making themselves extremely agreeable. You have known one or two men who, whenever you met them, conveyed to you, by a remarkably frank and genial manner, an impression that they esteemed you as one of their best and dearest friends. A vague idea took possession of your mind that they had been longing to see you ever since they saw you last,–which in all probability was six or twelve months previously. And during all that period it may be regarded as quite certain that the thought of you had never once entered their mind. Such a manner has a vast effect upon young and inexperienced folk. The inexperienced man fancies that this manner, so wonderfully frank and friendly, is reserved specially for himself, and is a recognition of his own special excellences. But the man of greater experience has come to suspect this manner, and to see through it. He has discovered that it is the same to everybody,–at least, to everybody to whom it is thought worth while to put it on. And he no more thinks of arguing the existence of any particular liking for himself, or of any particular merit in himself, from that friendly manner, than he thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that the sun has a special liking for himself, and is looking so beautiful and bright all for himself. It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves him more than all the others?

Yet it is to be admitted that it is always well that a man should be agreeable. Pleasantness is always a pleasing thing. And a sensible man, seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. But although there is an implied compliment, to your power, if not to your personality, in the fact of a man's taking pains to make himself agreeable to you, it is certain that he may try to make himself so by means of which the upshot will be to make him intensely disagreeable. You know the fawning, sneaking manner which an occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like a whipped dog, whenever you speak to him,–grinning and bowing, and (in a moral sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and begging you to wipe your feet on his head. You cannot help thinking that the sneak would be a tyrant, if he had the opportunity. It is pleasant to find people, in the humblest position, blending a manly independence of demeanor with the regard justly due to those placed by Providence farther up the social scale. Yet doubtless there are persons to whom the sneakiest manner is agreeable,–who enjoy the flattery and the humiliation of the wretched toady who is always ready to tell them that they are the most beautiful, graceful, witty, well-informed, aristocratic-looking, and generally-beloved of the human race. You must remember that it depends very much upon the nature of a man himself whether any particular demeanor shall be agreeable to him or not. And you know well that a cringing, toadying manner, which would be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-conceited idiot. Was there not an idiotic monarch who was greatly pleased, when his courtiers, in speaking to him, affected to veil their eyes with their hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick the people who thus treated him like a fool? And every one has observed that there are silly women who are much gratified by coarse and fulsome compliments upon their personal appearance, which would be regarded as grossly insulting by a woman of sense. You may have heard of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered beyond their paternal acres, (by their paternal acres I mean the acres they had recently bought,) and who had there grown into a fixed belief that they were among the noblest and mightiest of the earth, who thought their parish-clergyman an agreeable man, if he voted at the county-election for the candidate they supported, though that candidate's politics were directly opposed to those of the parson. These individuals, of course, would hold their clergyman as a disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles, and quite declined to take their wishes into account in exercising the trust of the franchise. Now, of course, a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, who should thus deny his convictions. Yes, there is no doubt that you may make yourself agreeable to unworthy folk by unworthy means. A late marquis declared on his dying bed, that a two-legged animal, of human pretensions, who had acted as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in the gratification of his peculiar tastes, was "an excellent man." And you may remember how Burke said, that, as we learn that a certain Mr. Russell made himself very agreeable to Henry VIII., we may reasonably suppose that Mr. Russell was himself (in a humble degree) something like his master. Probably, to most right-minded men, the fact that a man was agreeable to Henry VIII., or to the marquis in question, or to Belial, Beelzebub, or Apollyon, would tend to make that man remarkably disagreeable. And let the reader remember the guarded way in which the writer laid down his general principle as to pleasantness of character and demeanor. I said that a sensible man, seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. I exclude from the class of men to be esteemed agreeable those who would disgust all but fools or blackguards. I exclude parsons who express heretical views in theology in the presence of a patron known to be a freethinker. I exclude men who do great folk's dirty work. I exclude all toad-eaters, sneaks, flatterers, and fawning impostors,–from the school-boy who thinks to gain his master's favor by voluntarily bearing tales of his companions, up to the bishop who declared that he regarded it not merely as a constitutional principle, but as an ethical fact, that the king could do no wrong, and the other bishop who declared that the reason why George II. died was that this world was not good enough for him, and it was necessary to transfer him to heaven that he might be the right man in the right place. Such persons may succeed in making themselves agreeable to the man with whom they desire to ingratiate themselves, provided that man be a fool or a knave; but they assuredly render themselves disagreeable, not to say revolting, to all human beings whose good opinion is worth the possessing. And though any one who is not a fool will generally make himself agreeable to people of ordinary temper and nervous system, if he wishes to do so, it is to be remembered that too intrusive attempts to be agreeable often make a man very disagreeable; and likewise, that a man is the reverse of agreeable, if you see that he is trying, by managing and humoring you, to make himself agreeable to you,–I mean, if you can see that he is smoothing you down, and agreeing with you, and trying to get you on your blind side, as if he thought you a baby or a lunatic. And there is all the difference in the world between the frank, hearty wish in man or woman to be agreeable, and this diplomatic and indirect way. No man likes to think that he is being managed as Mr. Rarey might manage an unbroken colt. And though many human beings must in fact be thus managed,–though a person of wrong head, or of outrageous vanity, or of invincible prejudices, must be managed very much as you would manage a lunatic, (being, in fact, removed from perfect sanity upon these points,) still, they must never be allowed to discern that they are being managed, or the charm will fail at once. I confess, for myself, that I am no believer in the efficacy of diplomacy and indirect ways in dealing with one's fellow-creatures. I believe that a manly, candid, straight-forward course is always the best. Treat people in a perfectly frank manner,–you will be agreeable to most of those to whom you will desire to be so.

My reader, I am now about to tell you of certain sorts of human beings who appear to me as worthy of being ranked among disagreeable people. I do not pretend to give you an exhaustive catalogue of such. Doubtless you have your own black beasts, your own special aversions, which have for you a disagreeableness beyond the understanding or sympathy of others. Nor do I make quite sure that you will agree with me in all the views which I am going to set forth. It is not impossible that you may regard as very nice people or even as quite fascinating and inthralling people, certain people whom I regard as intensely disagreeable. Let me begin with an order of human beings, as to which I do not expect every one who reads this page to go along with me, though I do not know any opinion which I hold more resolutely than that which I am about to express.