第62章

I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is.He is the person who comes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, as his wife does also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinner cup of tea before the fire.Formal society begins as soon as you lock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bells and servants.It is lucky for us that our next-door neighbor is honest.

THE PARSON.Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?

Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all.They are agitators.Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, they wish to make it as unpleasant to others as possible.

MANDEVILLE.That's a noble view of your fellow-men.

OUR NEXT DOOR.Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt to be unpleasant people to live with?

THE PARSON.As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their own business were confined to the classes you mention! Some of the best people I know are philanthropists,--I mean the genuine ones, and not the uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living.

THE FIRE-TENDER.It is not altogether the not minding their own business.Nobody does that.The usual explanation is, that people with one idea are tedious.But that is not all of it.For few persons have more than one idea,--ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, manufacturers, merchants,--they all think the world they live in is the central one.

MANDEVILLE.And you might add authors.To them nearly all the life of the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished if they knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people are occupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation which is the vital current of the world to book-men.Newspapers have reached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflecting all the interests of the world.

THE MISTRESS.I have noticed one thing, that the most popular persons in society are those who take the world as it is, find the least fault, and have no hobbies.They are always wanted to dinner.

THE YOUNG LADY.And the other kind always appear to me to want a dinner.

THE FIRE-TENDER.It seems to me that the real reason why reformers and some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb our serenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings.It is only now and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor, of investigation and regeneration.At other times they rather hate those who disturb their quiet.

OUR NEXT DOOR.Professional reformers and philanthropists are insufferably conceited and intolerant.

THE MISTRESS.Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reform or a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.

MANDEVILLE.I attended a protracted convention of reformers of a certain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with a tableful of them.It was one of those country dinners accompanied with green tea.Every one disagreed with every one else, and you would n't wonder at it, if you had seen them.They were people with whom good food wouldn't agree.George Thompson was expected at the convention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in the talk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned that George took snuff,--when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up from the table.One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbons in her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared that she was perfectly disgusted, and did n't want to hear him speak.In the course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children, and how to administer punishment.I was quite taken by the remark of a thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in a harsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" It sounded as if he had said, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"THE PARSON.I supposed you would say that he was a minister.There is another thing about those people.I think they are working against the course of nature.Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform.She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.

There's a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued for many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nail resume its old regularity.You see the same thing in trees whose bark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer's intimacy with squashes.The bad traits in character are passed down from generation to generation with as much care as the good ones.Nature, unaided, never reforms anything.

MANDEVILLE.Is that the essence of Calvinism?

THE PARSON.Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact.

MANDEVILLE.When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism and calomel together.I thought that homeopathy--similia, etc.--had done away with both of them.

OUR NEXT DOOR (rising).If you are going into theology, I'm off..

IV

I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter.In order to be exhilarating it must be real winter.I have noticed that the lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind rages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the community.The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon country folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than that caused by a great conflagration.The abatement of a snow-storm that grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always the half-hope that this will be, since it has gone so far, the largest fall of snow ever known in the region, burying out of sight the great fall of 1808, the account of which is circumstantially and aggravatingly thrown in our way annually upon the least provocation.