“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”

My dear Jeremy,—I write you while a hail-storm is rattling at the window-panes, as if anxious to get in and warm its nose, and while the fire in my Radiator is roaring as angrily as a young lion, as if anxious to get out and have a battle with the storm. The clouds without, too, have a warlike aspect, look blue, and go tumbling about as if they had taken whisky-toddy not over warm. Nature, after the sulks, is hysterical. The wind goes moaning and howling around the house, as if anxious to vent its temper in a blow at somebody. The solitary oysterman in the street, is raising a cry as dolorous as if he had taken a breeze—been on a gale—on his own account, was melancholy, and had not the heart to sing-“away;” yet in fact he keeps singing away, in tones rather inviting to blue-devils. He does not feel, evidently, as well as his oysters, though he is their master. The vanity of riches is thus made apparent,—wealth does not always produce happiness. Patient industry in the storm is dismal—so another apophthegm is exploded. Knowledge is not the grand specific either. Their ignorance of the roasting which awaits them, is bliss. His knowledge of the roasting which awaits him—if he goes home without market-money—is, perhaps, the particular misery which weighs upon his soul, and renders his cry so plaintive.

The philosophers say that contentment is happiness—but who is contented? The very discoverers of this sovereign balm for restless spirits, go toiling on over musty tomes in search of something new, and grow fretful and peevish from indigestion, or irritable from age and failing eyesight. Nature herself is not always calm and smiling. She has her storms, her earthquakes, and her eruptions. The earth is not satisfied with her own dull face, but must borrow her brightness and beauty from the sun, she gets the dumps, and grows cold, if the loan is reluctantly given. What, then, can she expect from her children, but a thirst insatiate for change and glory of some sort? Philosophy is all very well in its way, and so is the philosopher’s stone—but who is the happy possessor of either? People talk of the insensibility of the oyster—perhaps that is the great secret; but try him upon a hot stove, if you wish to witness the open-mouthed, but mute, appeal of despairing distress; try him upon your palate afterward, if you wish to paliate conscience for his sufferings—but do not slander the fine feelings of so good a fellow for the sake of an apophthegm. He is more worthy of your regards than many men who put him to the torture on silver dishes.

Happiness, after all, is more active than passive, and depends a good deal upon the bent which education, our own strong instincts, or the fashion of the age or the day may inculcate. I’ll warrant me, that the Crusaders thought it consisted in slicing off the heads of the Saracens—the good old monks in fasting, prayer, and hair-garments,—some of the old fathers again, in capon, burgundy, and beauty. The curate of the English Church, thinks it is the mitre and the bishop’s holy office—the bishop, in turn, the gold and the influence of the station, yet he is not wholly satisfied. Some of the Spanish girls think it consists in a rich old husband, and a handsome young cavalier; others, who will none of them, turn nuns. John Bull finds his in roast-beef, trade, and the aristocracy. Brother Jonathan in politics, progression, gold, and the cuteness of the universal Yankee nation. But what philosopher, to clinch his theory, will bring you an individual who has no longings, no aspirings to be, or do, or have something more? Who does not feel proud to excel in something?—goodness even becomes a marketable article, for praise. Virtue in rags loves incense. Every man does, or feels that he does, outdo his fellows in something. The inflation of a mind conscious of superior powers; the thought of a purse larger and deeper—of a cheek of purer roundness, whiteness, or bloom—a voice of richer powers—a name, a position, the huzzas, or the stare of the multitude—to be a lucky fellow, a great man, these make up the sum of personal gratification. But who is contented, without taxing the praise, the envy, the pockets of others? The fashionable woman, who shines in brighter jewels and more brilliant parties than her opposing friends—the merchant who chuckles over the feat of driving a sharp bargain with a brother trader, each has a standard of happiness not set down in philosophy—self-sufficiency—personal acquisition and glory—vanity all, Jeremy.

Above the roar of my little fire, I hear, from my den editorial, the tumult of the great world without, and fancy I can see the struggle going on through all the avenues of life—from the church where we have specimen preaching and fashionable morals, down to the poor boot-black, who polishes your patent boots, and praises his patent blacking. You will find all things made up to lure and dazzle the unsophisticated. At every turn you must beware of man-traps and cajolings. In a moment, and a shape you least anticipate, some brilliant fortune-seducer and ensnarer, will start up opportunely in your very path; for what your own brain does not suggest, your passion and self-love urge you to—will spring, full-armed from the head of some daring genius, who is your dear friend, and takes you in, for that reason only. The influence of a bad example in morals or business, a determination not to be outdone or to be bullied, a suggestion to excel and overtop our fellows, are poisons very flatteringly administered to our self-esteem, but certain and deadly, nevertheless. The disease is contagious, and you have been slightly bitten already; be contented, my dear boy, if you can—but be modest, be wary, be cool. Instead of trying to practice philosophical apophthegms in a world made up as ours is, try a little self-denial. Let the glitter and the huzzas of the supposed great and successful, sweep by you, but stand firm—it is a luxury worth the testing. You shall look from the banks of the stream of time, and see the dead of the slain of this world float by you, and with your staff in hand, shall walk slowly and surely onward and upward to the source of all inspiration and happiness. You can have no chance in the bold games played in this world, without a defilement of the heart—an utter loss of self-respect, a total disregard or an annihilation of conscience.

Yet your sharp fellows—what a feast of enjoyment have they, in a world made up expressly to their hands of duller clay? Men who, smiling kindly, will cheat you before your very eyes, with a consciousness of self-power, that you cannot, with all your acuteness, tell under which thimble “the little joker” happens to be. Is there rare enjoyment in this? There must be, you will think, or why is it so perseveringly followed in nearly all the dealings of man with man. Your eyes are your market, my friend—keep them open. I’ll warrant you, that my dismal friend, who is singing so sadly out in the street over his bivalves, says in his heart—“the world is mine oyster,” and has as high an opinion of his own sagacity, as any dealer in broad-cloths or sugars, and will trick you as nicely with a specimen oyster, as the best of them. You shall buy them, upon looking at the one he opens for you—but be not amazed, oh, weak and trusting purchaser, at the shrunken forms of the shell-fish when thou openest the kettle! Call not hard names after the departing vendor—it is the way of life—a specimen is the same, all the world over. The departure from the principle is the exception, not the rule.

Not to say any thing about copper, a friend of mine was ruined by Patent Pumps—not dancing shoes, for he was a Quaker—but a very plain water-pump. He invested his all, as purchaser of the right, after seeing the model, which was very ingeniously devised to supply the famishing cattle of all the farm-houses in the country, at the shortest notice, with a steady supply from never-failing wells. There were not less than thirty thousand farmers anxiously waiting at that instant to buy the article at twenty dollars each. The inventor was poor, and needed ready money, or he never would have parted with it for ten times the sum agreed to be given. The only difficulty, with the new owner, was to find logs to be bored, and men as borers—it was a bore decidedly, and nothing but energy and perseverance could have surmounted these obstacles. But somehow, though the model worked bravely—even the ruin of its owner, pumping him dry—the water was obstinate in coming above its level in large bodies, and in consequence, the enterprise was water-logged. And so failing in the water business, he became a member of the Sons of Temperance, and took his revenge by putting down that water, that wouldn’t come up. And this man was an editor, like yourself, Jeremy, with a great fund of knowledge, and should have known better—at least so his friends said, and that was all the comfort they gave him.

Tom Brown, too—you remember Tom? had a wisdom above his years, and rather an ambition to do something extravagant and new. He therefore became discontented with the slow and sure profits of a regular business, and embarked his little fortune, great experience, and goahead-a-tive-ness in a “swift-sure” line. He purchased “The Patent Steam Sand Excavator and Elevator,” designed for the very laudable purpose of taking superfluous sand from river-beds, and transferring it to the mortar-beds of the builder. Tom had fortune now by the skirts, and would not let go. People wondered what Tom and his friends were at, ploughing up and down the river with their sand-scow, but supposed that they must have a large contract from government for cleansing the beds of the rivers—taking the initiative in navigation made easy. From the quantity of sand carefully piled upon shore, it was manifest that the business was to be done, and would be, thoroughly. Tom was cautious, close, smiling, and enjoyed highly all manner of jokes, such as “Capt. Sandy Tom”—Tom’s hair was red, but he wasn’t to be—and winked knowingly to the engineer, when he came on board.

“It will never do,” said Tom, “to let the secret out to these fellows, until we get our contracts with the builders, or we shouldn’t get half-price. And in order to do that safely, on a large scale, we must first get out the sand.”

Bright thought, shrewd Tom! The engine, therefore, went on puffing, but not Tom—he kept quiet, but busy.

“If we can throw dust into their eyes,” said he, “until we get a pile, we can come the bluff game on the river-side, with a hand full of spades, ha! How do you like that, engineer?”

The engineer thought that Tom was some, at a pun.

The enterprise went on, but it came to a head too, as all enterprises will, somehow; and Tom had spent his availables. But then he had the sand, heaps—yes, mountains of it.

“It is time now,” said he, “that I made my contracts with these builders. I’ll offer—let me see—ten thousand loads, at ten per cent. below the market price; that will bring in the funds, and send out the Excavator. They’ll snap at that, in no time. Then twenty thousand, at fifteen per cent. discount—and I’ll contract to supply the market for three years, at twenty-five per cent. off—and do it, too! Talk about your Liverpool Steamers, and your Girards improving the river fronts, will you? when you can scoup a fortune out of the dock, while these merchant princes are asleep.”

Tom made his terms for the ten thousand loads, “to be delivered as wanted.” He commenced, too, to fulfill his contracts, but the builders “did not want the article at all.” They had contracted for sand—not mud and sand together—and sand they insisted on having.

Alas! for the patent Excavator, neither it nor Tom’s genius could separate the particles. An action was brought against him for obstructing the river front, as soon as it was found he was not backed by government, and was backing himself, out of his contracts.

Tom coolly replied, “that he was devilish sorry, the Patent Steam Sand Excavator and Elevator had not been originally designed to run on land, as it might be used, now, to shovel it back again; but as for himself, he had been thrown so high by the Elevator, that it was doubtful if he would ever come down, in time to attend to it.”

I know another gentleman of the quill—who perpetrated errors of the press of this sort—who, in addition to instructing mankind, took it into his head to teach the hens something that nature never knew. An invention of some gigantic Yankee genius, styled “The Patent Chicken Hatcher, and Grand Cluck to the whole Commonwealth” was irresistible, and he bought it. It was demonstrated upon paper, that a certain number of chickens, ate but a given quantity of corn-meal. That any number of hens laid any number of eggs. That these produced any number of chickens, which, in a very short period of time, sold for any amount of money, or produced other eggs, after eating the aforesaid corn-meal. Now the “Chicken Hatcher,” proposed to improve upon nature by a sort of double rule of three proposition, and to show the result by logarithms as a sort of short-hand process, in the arithmetical progression of profits. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and she had therefore given up half the argument to the Hatcher—for the proposition was, to keep the hens continually at work, producing eggs for the Hatcher; while the Hatcher was continually working for them, in a sort of compound ratio producing chickens which should go on laying eggs to produce other chickens, ad infinitum. The thing was as plain as the nose on your face. To reason about it was to be absurd. To doubt, was to be scorned. Barbecues looked cheap and plentiful in perspective—roasts abundant, but rather more of a delicacy, as interfering somewhat more with progressive profits.

The eggs of a whole county were first to be submitted to experiment, previous to taking the entire Commonwealth under the capacious wing of the Hatcher. The first process of cubation completed, it was only necessary to heat the Patent, and the business was done, and so were the chickens; but instead of producing hens or roosters, it only roasted the eggs—and very nicely it did it, too, it is said. Nature defied the power of figures, and gave facts as arguments. The hens of the neighborhood survived the innovation, and went on in the old way. Our friend had burned his fingers as well as his eggs, and was sore when the subject was touched. It was his bull, and he didn’t wish him horned. A dilemma, neither horn of which he wished to take. He had hatched himself a life-time remembrancer whenever he heard a cock crow—and he wanted no crowing. He was no eg-otist on this subject; on the whole, he would rather cry peccavi—and shell out—he would stand treats, but no jokes.

But, my dear Jeremy, do not consider me as sneering at the ambition of man to outdo his fellows, to surpass all previous knowledge, to wrest nature from herself to fulfill his purposes—it is of the eternal law of progress. Man can no more stop, and be contented, than the worlds which are revolving in space, can rest and shine on. Each age makes a giant’s stride onward. The past is strewn with theories toppled down, and with systems exploded. The monuments of philosophy, the labor of ages, are the marks now for the child’s finger of scorn. The voyage of Columbus is now the work of a week. Work, did I say?—his toilsome and desolate path over the waters, is now the holyday ramble of all nations. Thought itself leaps a continent in a second, and by means of cipher, is communicated to minds thousands of miles distant, putting the speed of steam, the glory of an age just gone, to shame; accomplishing its purpose, even while the sonorous steam-whistle is but giving its note of departure. The press, in a night, performs the labor of a year, in multiplying printed thought, and a Commonwealth, a Nation is shaken in the time requisite, formerly, to ink the rollers for Franklin’s heavy edition. Who will say that man himself shall not yet be shot into the air like a rocket, and diverge at pleasure to any point of the compass, in defiance of the caprice of air-currents? That if he can now snatch from the sun a likeness of himself in an instant of time, he shall not, one day, look the sun itself in the face with unblinking eyes, take his observations from the horn of some remote planet, and return to earth to record his discoveries. “Philosophy,” you will say. But how much is philosophy herself learning daily? How much of her previous knowledge is shown daily to have been worthless? The chemist, the geologist, the astronomer, torture nature continually for her secrets, but the provident Mother is chary. It is but by a step at a time that her children are allowed to enter into her mysteries, lest the full blaze of her awful truths should suddenly strike them blind.

Shall we be contented, then, and pin our faith to the sleeve of that philosophy, which sees happiness in the indolence and ignorance of the savage, who

“Basks in the glare, and stems the tepid wave,

And thanks his gods for all the good they gave.”

Or shall we assert the rights of a diviner principle within us, restless, yearning, unsatisfied, which if it is not allowed to soar up and grasp after a goodness, like unto God, will attempt to absorb its energies in the pursuit of evil, wreaking upon humanity around it, the power of a fiend to make wretched, the cunning of a devil, to seduce and destroy?

It is reserved for the Millenium, to give us all the knowledge, all the good, all the perfection we are striving after; until then, who will—any, who can—rest satisfied? When “the lion and the lamb shall lie down together,” and man shall cease to war upon his brother, the philosophy of Experiment and of Observation shall be perfect, man shall cease from struggling, shall be contented and be HAPPY.

G. R. G.