Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and use up in advance their life-force: it is done in ways more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.

  It is the temptation to natures in which the moral faculties predominate to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good example in domestic life.

  The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.

  Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature, — and poor Mrs. X. knows when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is, things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts tell her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and that the hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of darkness will be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the pattering feet of any of the poor little Xs., who must be sent

  “Anywhere, anywhere,

  Out of his sight;”

  he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous about the butcher’s bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the salary don’t meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of Jesus under prvoocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the way that is the most effective, by setting him forth in his own daily example.

  What then? must we not do the work of the Lord?

  Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a Christian man. Better labour for years steadily, diligently, doing every day only what the night’s rest can repair, avoiding those cheating stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations and depressions.

  The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.

  It could be wished that in every neighbourhood there might be one or two calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for a few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a constant, unnoticed, daily supply, the lamp of faith and love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best antidote to care; and we trust ere long that all Christian people will be of one mind in this, and that neighbourhoods will be families gathering daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each other.

  The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to make merry with at home, and guard that reserve as religiously as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are, however good, however wide the general interests that you may control, you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is, — what do you suppose?—”He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

  Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable states.

  But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to them unavoidably; for these reasons —

  First. The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, who will need constant care and wisdom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.

  There is a temperament called the HYPOCHONDRIAC, to which many persons, some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are born heirs, — a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent depression, — an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish without its rewards.

  People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do.

  Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand themselves and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache, — to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and ruin.

  The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man once knows that he has it, and recognizes it for a disease, — when he does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the ravings of fever.

  A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts that infest his soul.

  A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, “My dear sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak.” And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving pr
esence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and self-control.

  Such victories as this are the victories of real saints.

  But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy load by the use of any stimulus whatever, he or she is a lost man or woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr. Johnson, — those who can practise ABSTINENCE, but not TEMPERANCE. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite — a burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. It needs the most healthful, careful, even regime and management to keep it within the bounds of soundness; but the introduction of stimulants deepens its gloom almost to madness.

  All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood; and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable inheritance.

  The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon their nervous energies, and who, therefore, are always exhausted and worn out. Poor souls, who labour daily under a burden too heavy for them, and whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the door; and all the hard-labouring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of life press far beyond their strength.

  There are but two things we know of for these, — two only remedies for the irritation that comes of these exhaustions: the habit of silence towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.

  III. REPRESSION.

  Being the true copy of a paper read in my library to my Wife and Jennie.

  I AM going now to write on another cause of family unhappiness, more subtile than either of those before enumerated.

  In the General Confession of the Church, we poor mortals all unite in saying two things: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” These two heads exhaust the subject of human frailty.

  It is the things left undone which we ought to have done, the things left unsaid which we ought to have said, that constitute the subject I am now to treat of.

  I remember my school-day speculations over an old “Chemistry” I used to study as a text-book, which informed me that a substance called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it exists in a latent state: it is there, but it affects neither the senses nor the thermometer. Certain causes develop it when it raises the mercury and warms the hands. I remember the awe and wonder with which, even then, I reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and dumb comforts which nature had thus stowed away. How mysterious it seemed to me that poor families every winter should be shivering, freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had all this latent caloric locked up in her store-closet, — when it was all around them, in everything they touched and handled.

  In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.

  Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of, — it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing — the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel.

  Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to be warm, — whose life is cold and barren and meagre, — which never see the blaze of an open fire.

  I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience.

  I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favourite sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar, — a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking out of vapoury clouds of gauze and curls, and all the vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning.

  Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one! — for her husband was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and solid as adamant, — and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose for her. “It was quite a providence,” sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom, during the marriage ceremony.

  I remember now the bustle of the day, — the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bride-cakes, the losing of trunk keys, and breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma — God bless her! — and the jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as well off himself.

  And so Emmy was wheeled away from us on the bridal tour, when her letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, frisky little bits of scratches, — as full of little nonsense beads as a glass of champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was, and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc., etc.

  Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but while it was building they were to live with his mother, who was “such a good woman,” and his sisters, who were also “such nice women.”

  But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy’s letters. They grew shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.

  John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired. Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she could reasonably expect, — of course she could not be like her own mamma; and Mary and Jane were very kind,—”in their way,” she wrote, but scratched it out, and wrote over it “very kind indeed.” They were the best people in the world, — a great deal better than she was; and she should try to learn a great deal from them.

  “Poor little Em!” I said to myself, “I am afraid these very nice people are slowly freezing and starving her.” And so, as I was going up into the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John’s many invitations, and stop a day or tw
o with them on my way, and see how matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at last, I found the treasures worth taking.

  I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evans’s house, It was the house of the village, — a true, model, New England house, — a square, roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hill-side under a group of great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled, and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke from the kitchen chimney.

  And now for the people in the house.

  In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in the glacial spare chamber, that had been kept from time immemorial as a refrigerator for guests, — that room which no ray of daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.