Chapter XIV

I wish my reader could sympathize with me, upon coming thus far in my history. I am aware that I have written nothing of much importance, so far as incident may be looked for. But, to my view, life is rather a succession of feelings and sentiments, than of actions. It fills me with inexpressible satisfaction, to find that I have mastered my adversaries, idleness and irresolution, in this instance, and have come to this point. It is the longest and most arduous task I have ever performed, for it is a work of continued exertion. I have never flagged from it; and the idea that some good inferences may be drawn from these pages, by the young among my own countrymen, so that my life may not pass away without one useful act, one deed of positive good, has supported me.

Let every idler, if he wishes to enjoy one happy hour, set about doing something, no matter what. Let him undertake to commit a chapter in the Bible to memory, or copy some piece of writing, or to make any intellectual exertion; but let it be definite; not take a walk, or a journey, or any thing that requires movement of the body, but still, continued, uninterrupted study and attention. Idlers are the veriest busy-bodies we know, and always flying about in some shape or other. They are idle with the appearance of industry, and deceive every body but themselves. While the world looks on, and wonders at their diligence, they are passing hours, days, years, of the most insupportable care, the care of finding something to do. I know something of the tedium of this life, and confess, that the hours spent in these records have been the happiest of my life, because I have had an end, an object, constantly in view.

My debts all paid once more, my character again rëinstated, my purse well supplied, my wardrobe in the newest fashion, and abundant as I could pack, behold the rustic of a year's standing, the lover, whose heart was broken, getting into the stage for L——, the place of the celebrated law-school; while Thomas, dressed in the self-same suit in which I had arrived some year before, is packing the trunks on behind. Alas! the association of that event and those pantaloons! Reader, they did put me in mind of the romantic hills and valley of N——, and then of Alice Clair; though to get to these affecting thoughts, I had to pass through the tailor's shop where they were made. There is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and so backward from the ridiculous to the sublime.

But in the height of my satisfaction in being permitted to take a new start in the world, under such favorable auspices, my love-disappointment did not weigh very heavily upon my heart. I had already, as I thought, performed all my promises of being a good student, etc., for I wished to, and I took the will for the deed. I wished it so much, that not a doubt or misgiving disturbed the serenity of my mind. I esteemed it a settled matter, that I was, in the first place, to make myself remarkable as a student; and then, without any trouble, to walk directly to the top of the profession. I was a sanguine——fool!

This confidence inspired my father with golden hopes; and when we parted, he told me he was the happiest man in the city. 'Now, my son,' said he, 'you are old enough (I was twenty) to begin to form a character; all your wild oats are sown; the past is forgotten; you have your destiny in your own hands. Write to me often; tell me all your wishes; and (here the devil jogged his elbow) draw upon me, if you want more money. God bless you, my dear boy!' The tears started in his eyes; mine were wet, too. As I got into the stage, (mark the baseness of my heart!) I dwelt mostly upon the words, 'Draw upon me, if you want more money.' My eyes ceased their weeping. I addressed some gay make-acquaintance remarks to a fellow passenger, and as we rattled over the bridge in the velocipede line of coaches, forgot every thing but the beauty of the morning, and only wondered how long it would be before breakfast.

So contemptible is the spirit of youth, in its blind passion for pleasure. All the higher, nobler feelings sink into insignificance, compared with its own selfish enjoyments. Pleasure, love of pleasure, tramples upon the holy influences of home; it steels the heart to filial affection; it saps the juices of youth; and leaves the young body prematurely cold, and lifeless, and insensible, to the natural action of all those relations and sentiments, that reason is intended to draw its moral food from. The mother 'who watched o'er our childhood' is forgotten; the father disregarded, and the sister's face is crimsoned with shame for us, and we ourselves are lost. And for what? For an hour's amusement; a short-lived enjoyment; an empty sound of revelry, and unmeaning mirth.

What inconsistency! Hardly had I got a step from my father's door; hardly had my fingers lost the affectionate pressure of his hand, when the evil genius stepped in, to scatter the impressions which a moment before seemed so fixed.

Since the time of my mother's death, I never had passed the door of the chamber where she died, without thinking of the evening when I visited her corpse, alone—a pure boy, free from all vice, all contamination—and then drawing the comparison between the present and the past. Such reflections always gave me pain, and summoned up all the resolution I was master of. I am convinced, that, if I had had a mother until my mind had acquired strength and firmness, I should have been a better and a happier man.

A father's love acts upon us later in life, but a mother leads us up to God. She bends and moulds our tender minds to her purposes so gently, that we are hardly aware of the pressure; but the father admires, and praises, and waters the more vigorous branches of our growth.

Our reading, our studies, sermons, nature, observation, tend to give to the mother a poetical interest in our hearts, in after years, when she is dead. She is the nucleus about which gather some of the most beautiful associations of our manhood. When we ourselves have children, we find out what is the nature of parental affection, and we look back with regret that we did not know and estimate it better, so that the homage of our love might have been more devoted, for what is so worthy of being repaid.