id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1 value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000012929700 | that would permeate the land; the peasant studying social science over his tea, and the railway-guard supping his cheap Gladstone as he speculated on the Antiquity of Man. Never was such an Eden on earth, and all to be accomplished at the cost of a mere million or two, with a limited liability. With what a grand contempt this great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929701 | man talked of the people who busied themselves in the visionary pursuits of politics or literature, or who devoted themselves to the Arts or Field-sports! With him earthworks were the grandest achievements of humanity, and there was no such civiliser as a parliamentary train. Had he been simply an enthusiast, that fatal false logic that _will_ track enthusiasm--however it be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929702 | guided--would have betrayed him: but the man was not an enthusiast--he was a great actor; and while to capitalists and speculators he appealed by all the seductive inducements of profits, premiums, and preference shares, to the outer and unmoneyed world he made his approaches by a beautiful and touching philanthropy. Did he believe in all this? Heaven knows. He talked | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929703 | and acted as if he did; and though, when I last saw him, he had smashed his banker, ruined his company, and beggared the shareholders, he was high-hearted, hopeful, and buoyant as ever. It was a general who had lost a battle, but he meant to recruit another army. It was some accidental rumour of a war--some stupid disturbance on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929704 | the Danube or the Black Sea--that had frightened capital and made money tight. The scheme itself was a glorious project--an unrivalled investment. Never was there such a paying line--innumerable towns, filled with a most migratory population, ever on the move, and only needing to learn the use of certain luxuries to be constantly in demand of them. With a good | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929705 | harvest, however, and money easy, if Lord Russell could only be commonly civil to the Continental Cabinets, all would go well yet. The bounties of Providence would be diffused over the earth--food would be cheap, taxation reduced, labour plenty, and then, sir, these worthy people shall have their line, if I die for it. I find it very hard to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929706 | believe in Borneos love or Othellos jealousy. I cannot, let me do all that I will, accept them as real, even in their most impassioned moments, and yet this other man holds me captive. If I had a hundred pounds in the world, Id put it into his scheme, and I really feel that, in not borrowing the money to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929707 | make a venture, I am a poor-spirited creature that has not the courage to win his way to fortune. And yet these fellows have no aid from dress or make-up. They are not surrounded with all the appliances that aid a deception. They come to us in their everyday apparel, and, mayhap, at inopportune moments, when we are weary, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929708 | busy, or out of sorts, to talk of what we are not interested in, and have no relish for. With their marvellous tact they conquer apathy and overcome repugnance; they gain a hearing, and they obtain at least time for more. There is much in what they say that we feel no interest in; but now and then they _do_ | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929709 | touch a chord that vibrates within us; and when they do so, it is like magic the instinct with which they know it. It was that Roman camp, that lead-mine, that trout-stream, or that paper-mill, did the thing; and the rogue saw it as plainly as if he had a peep into our brain, and could read our thoughts like | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929710 | a printed book. These then, I say, are the truly great actors, who walk the boards of life with unwritten parts, who are the masters of our emotions, even to the extent of taking away our money, and who demand our trustfulness as a right not to be denied them. Now, what a poor piece of mockery, of false tinsel | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929711 | and fringe and folly and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the assumed plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the station, in the club, on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929712 | the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there any one, I ask, who will pay to see the plaster-cast when he can behold the marble original for nothing? You say, Are you going to the masquerade? and I answer, I am at it. _Circumspice!_ Look at the mock royalties hunting (Louis XIV. fashion) in the deep woods of Fontainebleau. Look | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929713 | at haughty lords and ladies--the haughtiest the earth has ever seen--vying in public testimonies of homage--as we saw a few days ago--to the very qualities that, if they mean anything, mean the subversion of their order. Look at the wasteful abundance of a prison dietary, and the laudable economy which half-starves the workhouse. Look at the famished curate, with little | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929714 | beyond Greek roots to support him, and see the millionaire, who can but write his name, with a princely fortune; and do you want Webster or Buckstone to give these characters more point? Will you take a box for the Comedy of Errors, when you can walk into the Chancery Court for nothing? Will you pay for Much Ado about | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929715 | Nothing, when a friendly order can admit you to the House? And as for a New Way to Pay Old Debts, commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in Bankruptcy; while Loves Last Shift is daily performed at the Court of Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any need to puzzle ones head over the decline of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929716 | drama, then? You might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for the trouble of taking them! PENSIONS FOR GOVERNORS. I do not remember ever to have read more pompons nonsense than was talked a few days ago in Parliament on the subject of pensions for retired colonial | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929717 | governors. On all ordinary occasions the strongest case a man can have with the British public is to be an ill-used man--that is to say, if you be a man of mark, or note, or station. To be ill-used, as one poor, friendless, and ignoble, is no more than the complement of your condition. It is in the fitness of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929718 | things that pauperism, which we English have declared to be illegal, should neither be fondled nor caressed. To be ill-used profitably there must be something pictorial in your case; it must have its reliefs of light as well as shade. There must be little touches, a bright has been, sunny spots of a happy past Without the force of these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929719 | contrasts, there is no possibility of establishing the grand grievance which is embodied in ill-usage. Now, Mr B. C. who brought on this motion was a sorry artist, and the whole sum and substance of his case was, that as we secured the services of eminent and able men, we ought to pay them properly. Why, in that one word | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929720 | properly lay the whole question. What constitutes proper payment? Every career in life carries with it some circumstance either of advantage or the reverse, which either compensates for the loss of a material benefit, or is requited by some addition of a tangible profit. The educated man who accepts three hundred a-year in the Church is not recompensed, or considered | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929721 | to be recompensed, by this miserable pittance. It is in the respect, the influence, the power, and the reverence that attach to his calling he is rewarded. Place a layman in the parish beside him with that income, and mark the difference of their stations! The same of the soldier. Why or how does seven-and-sixpence diurnally represent one the equal | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929722 | of the best in any society of the land? Simply by a conventional treaty, by which we admit that a man, at the loss of so much hard cash, may enjoy a station which bears no imaginable proportion to his means. On the other hand, there are large communities who, addressing themselves to acquire wealth and riches, care very little | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929723 | for the adventitious advantages of social state. As it is told of Theodore Hook, at a Lord Mayors feast, that he laid down his knife and fork at the fifth course, and declared he would take the rest out in money; so there are scores of people who go in for the actual and the real. They have no sympathy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929724 | with those who take out their social status partly in condition partly in cash, as is the case with the curate and the captain. Almost every man, at his outset in life, makes some computation of how much his career can pay him in money, how much in the advantages of rank and station. The bailiff on the estate makes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929725 | very often a far better income than the village doctor; but do you believe that sculapius would change places with him for all that? Is not the unbought deference to his opinion, the respect to his acquirements, the obedience to his counsel, something in the contract he makes with the world? Does he not recognise, every day of his life, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929726 | that he is not measured by the dimensions of the small house he resides in, or the humble qualities of the hack he rides, but that he has an acceptance in society totally removed from every question of his fortune? In the great lottery we call life, the prizes differ in many things besides degree. If the man of high | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929727 | ambition determine to strain every nerve to attain a station of eminence and power, it may be that his intellectual equal, fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My brother the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929728 | Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk my village rounds of a summers morning, inhaling perfume of earth and plant, following with my eye the ever-mounting lark, have I not a lighter heart, a freer step, a less wearied head? Have I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929729 | not risen refreshed from sleep? not nightmared by the cutting sarcasms of some noble earl on my fresh-gilt coronet, some slighting allusion to my newness in that place? Depend upon it, the grand law of compensation which we recognise throughout universal nature extends to the artificial conditions of daily life, and regulates the action and adjusts the inequalities of our | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929730 | social state. What is a viceroy or a colonial governor? A man of eminence and ability, doubtless, but who is satisfied to estrange himself from home and country, and occupy himself with cares and interests totally new and strange to him, for some five or fifteen thousand pounds a-year, plus a great variety of other things, which to certain minds | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929731 | unquestionably represent high value--the--station, the power, the prestige of a great position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office. In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929732 | words of their wisdom, and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips. Why, through all the employments of life, who ever attains to the like of this? His presence is an honour, his notice is fame. To be his guest is a distinction for a day; to be his host is to be illustrious for a lifetime. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929733 | Are these things nothing? Ask the noble earl as he sits in his howdah; ask my lord marquis as he rides forth with a glittering staff. Did any one, even Mr B. C. himself, ever imagine that Mr Macready ought to be pensioned after he had played Cardinal Wolsey? Was it ever proposed, even in Parliament, that Mr Kean should | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929734 | have a retiring allowance when he had taken off his robes as Henry IV.? These eminent men were, however, just as real, just as actual, during their brief hour on the stage, as His Excellency the Viceroy or the Lord High. They were there under a precisely similar compact. They had to represent a state which had no permanence, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929735 | a power that had no stability. They were to utter words which would be ridiculous from their lips to-morrow, and to assume a port and bearing that must be abandoned when they retired to change their clothes. It is one of my very oldest memories as a boy that I dined in company with Charles Kemble. There was a good | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929736 | deal of talking, and a fair share of wine-drinking. In the course of the former came the question of the French Revolution of , and the conduct of the French King on that occasion. Kemble took no part in the discussion; he listened, or seemed to listen, filled his glass and emptied it, but never spoke. At last, when each | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929737 | speaker appeared to have said his say, and the subject approached exhaustion, the great actor, with the solemnity of a judge in a charge, and with a grand resonance of voice, said: Ill tell you how it is, sirs; Charles X. has forfeited a--a--a right good engagement! And that was exactly the measure that he and all his tribe took, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929738 | and are now taking, of kings and rulers--and let us profit by it. The colonial king has his engagement; it is defined exactly like the actors. He is to play certain parts, and for so many nights; he is to strut his hour in the very finest of properties, and is sure, which the actor is not always, of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929739 | certain amount of applause. No living creature believes seriously in him, far less he himself, except, perhaps, in some impassioned moment or other like that in which I once knew Othello so far carried away that he flung Iago into the orchestra. Pension Carlisle, pension Storks, if you will; but be just as well as generous, and take care that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929740 | you provide for Paul Bedford and Buckstone. In Archbishop Whatelys Historic Doubts, we find that the existence of the first emperor can be disproven by the very train of argument employed to deny the apostles. Let me suggest the converse of this mode of reasoning, and ask, Is there a word you can say for the Viceroy you cannot equally | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929741 | say for the actor? Have you an argument for him who governs St Helena that will not equally apply to him who struts his hour at the Haymarket? I perceive that the writer of a letter to the Times advocates the claims of the ex-Governors, on the plausible plea that it is exactly the very men who best represent the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929742 | dignity of the station--best reflect the splendour of the Sovereign--who come back poor and penniless from the high office: while the penurious Governor, who has given dissatisfaction everywhere, made the colony half rebellious by his narrow economies, and degraded his station by contemptible savings, comes back wealthy and affluent--self-pensioned, in fact, and independent. To meet this end, the writer suggests | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929743 | that the Crown, as advised thereon, should have a discretionary power of rewarding the well-doer and refusing the claim of the unmeriting, which would distinctly separate the case of the worthy servant of the Sovereign from that of him who only employed his office to enrich himself. There is a certain shallow--it is a very shallow--plausibility about this that attracts | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929744 | at first sight; and there would unquestionably be some force in it, if dinner-giving and hospitalities generally were the first requisites of a colonial ruler; but I cannot admit this. I cannot believe that the man who administers India or Canada, or even Jamaica or Barbadoes, is only an expatriated Lord Mayor. I will not willingly consent to accept it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929745 | as qualification for a high trust that a man has a good cook and an admirable cellar, and an ostentatious tendency to display the merits of both. Mind, I am no ascetic who say this: I like good dinners; I like occasionally--only occasionally though--very good dinners. I feel with a clever countryman who said he liked being asked out to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929746 | dine, it was flattering, and it was nourishing; but with all this I should never think of elevating my host to the dignity of high statesmanship on the mere plea of his hospitality. We have had some able men in our dependencies who were not in the least given to social enjoyments, who neither understood them for themselves nor thought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929747 | of them for others--Sir Charles Napier, for instance. And who, let me ask, would have lost the services of such a man to the State, because he had not the tastes of a Sir William Curtis, nor could add a Cubitt to his stature? All discretionary powers are, besides, abuses. They are the snares and pitfalls of official jobbery; and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929748 | there would be no end of bickering and complaining on the merits of this and the shortcomings of that man. Not to say that such a system as this writer recommends would place a Government in the false position of rewarding extravagance and offering a premium for profusion, and holding up for an example to our colonial fellow-subjects the very | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929749 | habits and tastes which are the bane and destruction of young communities. Can any one imagine a Cabinet Council sitting to determine whether the ex-Governor of St Helena had or had not entertained the officers of the 509th Foot on their return from India, or whether he of Heligoland had really fed his family on molluscs during all the time | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929750 | of his administration, and sold the shells as magnesia? There could be but one undeniable test of an ex-Governors due claim to a pension, since on the question of a mans hospitalities evidence would vary to eternity. There are those whose buttermilk is better than their neighbours bordeaux. I repeat, there could be but one test as to the claim; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929751 | and as we read in a police sheet, as a sufficient ground for arrest, the two words, Drunk and Disorderly, so should any commission on pensions accept as valid grounds for a pension, Insolvent and a Bankrupt. To talk of these men as ill-used, or their case as a hard one, is simply nonsense! You might as well say that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929752 | the man you asked to dinner to-day has a legitimate ground of complaint against you because you have not invited him to breakfast to-morrow. A GRUMBLE. I wonder is the world as pleasant as it used to be? Not to myself, of course--I neither ask nor expect it; but I mean to those who are in the same position to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929753 | enjoy it as I was--years ago. I am delicate about the figures, for Mrs OD. occasionally reads these sketches, and might feel a wifelike antipathy to a record of this nature. I repeat--I wonder is life as good fun as it was when I made my first acquaintance with it? My impression is that it is not. I do not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929754 | presume to say that all the same elements are not as abundant as heretofore. There are young people, and witty people, and, better, there are beautiful people, in abundance. There are great houses as of yore, maintained, perhaps, with even more than bygone splendour: the horses are as good--the dogs as good--the trout-streams as well stocked--the grouse as abundant--foreign travel | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929755 | is more easy--all travel is more facile--there are more books and more illustrated newspapers; and yet, with all these advantages--very tangible advantages too--I do not think the present occupants make the house as pleasant as their fathers did, and for the very simple reason, that they never try. Indifferentism is the tone of the day. No one must be eager, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929756 | pleased, displeased, interested, or anxious about anything. Life is to be treated as a tiresome sort of thing, but which is far too much beneath one to be thought of seriously--a wearisome performance, which good manners require you should sit out, though nothing obliges you to applaud or even approve of it. This is the theory, and we have been | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929757 | most successful in reducing it to practice. We are immensely bored, and we take good care so shall be our neighbour. Just as we have voted that there is nothing new, nothing strange, nothing amusing, we defy any one to differ with us, on pain of pronouncing him vulgar. North American Indians are not more case-hardened against any show of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929758 | suffering under torture than are our well-bred people against any manifestation of showing pleasure in anything. It wasnt bad, is about the highest expression of our praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven--if we got there. The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear any amount of amusement without wincing: no pleasure is to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929759 | wring a smile from him, nor is any expectancy to interest, or any unlooked-for event to astonish. He would admit that the Governor--meaning his father--was surprised; he would concede the fact, as recording some prejudice of a bygone age. As the tone of manners and observance has grown universal, so has the very expression of the features. They are intensely | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929760 | like each other. We are told that a shepherd will know the actual faces of all the sheep in his flock, distinguishing each from each at a glance. I am curious to know if the Bishop of London knows even the few lost sheep that browse about Rotten Eow of an afternoon, and who are so familiar to us in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929761 | Leechs sketches. There they are--whiskered, bearded, and bored; fine-looking animals in their way, but just as much living creatures in Punch as they are yonder. It is said that they only want the stimulus of a necessity, something of daring to tempt, or something of difficulty to provoke them, to be just as bold and energetic as ever their fathers | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929762 | were. I dont deny it. I am only complaining of the system which makes sheep of them, reduces life to a dreary table-land, making the stupid fellows the standard, and coming down to their level for the sake of uniformity. Formerly they who had more wit, more smartness, more worldly knowledge than their neighbours, enjoyed a certain pre-eminence; the flash | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929763 | of their agreeability lighted up the group they talked in, and they were valued and sought after. Now the very homage rendered, even in this small way, was at least a testimony that superiority was recognised and its claims admitted. What is the case now? Apathy is excellence, and the nearest approach to insensibility is the greatest eminence attainable. In | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929764 | the Regency, when George IV. was Prince, the clever talkers certainly abounded; and men talk well or ill exactly as there is a demand for the article. The wittiest conversationalist that ever existed would be powerless in a circle of these modern Unsurprised ones. Their vacant self-possession would put down all the Grattans and Currans and Jeffreys and Sydney Smiths | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929765 | in the world. I defy the most brilliant, the readiest, the most genial of talkers to vivify the mass of inert dulness he will find now at every dinner and in every drawing-room. The code of modern manners is to make ease the first of all objects; and, in order that the stupidest man may be at his ease, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929766 | ablest is to be sacrificed. He who could bring vast stores of agreeability to the common stock must not show his wares, because there are a store of incapables who have nothing for the market. They have a saying in Donegal, that the water is so strong it requires two whiskies; but I would ask what amount of spirits would | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929767 | enliven this dreariness; what infusion of pleasantry would make Brown and Jones endurable when multiplied by what algebraists call an _x_--an unknown quantity--of other Browns and Joneses? We are constantly calling attention to the fact of the influence exerted over morals and manners in France by the prevailing tone of the lighter literature, and we mark the increasing licentiousness that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929768 | has followed such works as those of Eugene Sue and the younger Dumas. Let us not forget to look at home, and see if, in the days when the Waverleys constituted almost all our lighter reading, the tone of society was not higher, the spirit more heroic, the current of thought and expression purer, than in these realistic days, when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929769 | we turn for amusement to descriptions of every quaint vulgarity that makes up the life of the boarding-house or the strolling theatre. The glorious heroism of Scotts novels was a fine stream to turn into the turbid river of our worldliness and money-seeking. It was of incalculable benefit to give men even a passing glance of noble devotion, high-hearted courage, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929770 | and unsullied purity. I can remember the time when, as freshmen in our first year, we went about talking to each other of Ivanhoe and Kenilworth; and I can remember, too, when the glorious spirit of those novels had so possessed us, that our romance elevated and warmed us to an unconscious imitation of the noble thoughts and deeds we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929771 | had been reading. Smile if you like at our boyish enthusiasm, it was better than the mocking spirit engendered by all this realism, or the insensate craving after stimulus taught by sensation novels. Now, I am not old enough to remember the great talkers of the time when George III. was King, or those who made Carlton House famous; but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929772 | I belonged to a generation where these men were remembered, and where it was common enough to hear stories of their Attic nights, those _noctes cnque deorum_ which really in brilliancy must have far transcended anything that Europe could boast of conversational power. The youth of the time I speak of were full of these traditions. If I am not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929773 | the rose, I grew near one, was no foolish boast; and certainly there was both in the tone of conversation and the temper of society a sentiment that showed how the great men had influenced their age, and how, even after their sun had gone down, a warm tint remained to remind the world of the glorious splendour that had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929774 | departed. Being an Irishman, it is to Ireland I must go for my illustration, and it is my pride to remember that I have seen some of those who were, in an age of no common convivial excellence, amongst the first and the greatest. They are gone, and I may speak of them by name--Lord Plunkett, the Chief-Justice Bushe, Mr | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929775 | Casey, Sir Philip Crampton, Barr Beresford--I need not go on. I have but to recall the leading men at the bar, to make up a list of the most brilliant talkers that ever delighted society. Nor was the soil exhausted with these; there came, so to say, a second crop--a younger order of men--less versed in affairs, it is true, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929776 | less imbued with that vigorous conviviality that prevailed in their fathers days--but of these I must not speak, for they have now grown up to great dignities and stations, they have risen to eminence and honour and repute, and might possibly be ashamed if it were known that they were once so agreeable. Let me, however, record one who is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929777 | no more, but who possessed the charm of companionship to a degree I never knew equalled in all my varied experiences of life,--one who could bring the stores of a well-stocked mind, rich in scholarship, to bear upon any passing incident, blended with the fascination of a manner that was irresistible. Highly imaginative, and with a power of expression that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929778 | was positively marvellous, he gave to ordinary conversation an elevation that actually conferred honour on those who were associated with it; and high above all these gifts and graces, a noble nature, generous, hopeful, and confiding. With an intellect that challenged any rivalry, he had, in all that touched worldly matters, the simplicity of a child. To my countrymen it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929779 | is needless I should tell of whom I speak; to others, I say his name was Mortimer OSullivan. The mellow cadence of his winning voice, the beam of his honest eye, the generous smile that never knew scorn, are all before me as I write, and I will write no more. OF OUR BROTHERS BEYOND THE BORDER. There is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929780 | story current of a certain very eminent French naturalist, who is so profoundly impressed by the truth of the Darwinian theory, that he never passes the cage where the larger apes are confined in the Jardin des Plantes without taking off his hat, making a profound obeisance, and wishing them a _bon jour_. This recognition is touching and graceful. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929781 | homage of the witches to him who should be king hereafter, had in it a sort of mockery that made it horrible; but here we have an act of generous courtesy, based alike on the highest discoveries of science and the rules of the truest good-breeding. The learned professor, with all the instincts of great acquirements and much self-knowledge united, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929782 | admits them at once to equality and fraternity--the liberty, perhaps, they will have to wait some time for; but in that they are no worse off than some millions of their fellow-countrymen. One might speculate long--I dont know exactly how profitably--on the sense of gratitude these creatures must feel for this touching kindness, how they must long for the good | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929783 | mans visit, how they must wonder by what steps he arrived at this astonishing knowledge, how surprised they must feel that he does not make more converts; and, last of all, what pains they must take to exhibit in their outward bearing and behaviour that they are not unworthy of the high consideration he bestows on them! Before him no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929784 | monkey-tricks, no apish indecorums--none even of those passing levities which young gorillas will indulge in just like other youths. No; all must be staid, orderly, and respectful--heads held well up--hands at rest--tails nowhere; in fact, a port and bearing that would defy the most scrutinising observer to say that they were less eligible company than that he had just quitted | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929785 | at the caf. I own I have not seen them during the moment of the Professors passage. I am unable to state authentically whether all this be as I surmise, but I have a strong impression it must be. Indeed, reflecting on the habits and modes of the species, I should be rather disposed to believe them given to an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929786 | exuberant show of gratitude than to anything like indifference, and expect to witness demonstrations of delight more natural possibly than graceful. Now, I have not the most remote intention of impugning the Professors honesty. I give him credit--full credit--for high purpose, and for high courage. These poor brothers of ours, says he, have tails, it is true, and they have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929787 | not the hypocampus major; but let me ask you, Monsieur le Duc, or you, Monseigneur the Archbishop, will you dare to affirm on oath that you yourself are endowed with a hypocampus major or minor? Are you prepared to stand forward and declare that the convolutions of your brain are of the regulation standard--that the medullary part is not disproportioned | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929788 | to the cineritious--that your falx is not thicker or thinner than it ought--and that your optic thalami are not too prominent? And if you are not ready to do this, what avails all your assumption of superiority? In these--they are not many--lie the alleged differences between you and your caged cousins yonder. Thus speaks, or might speak, the Professor; and, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929789 | I repeat, I respect his candour; but still I would venture to submit one small, perhaps ungenerous doubt, and ask, Would he, acting on the noble instincts that move him, vote these creatures an immediate and entire emancipation, or would he not rather wait a while--a few years, say--till the habit of sitting on chairs had worn off some of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929790 | the tail, and a greater familiarity with society suggested not to store up their dinner in their jaws? Would he like to see them at once take their places in public life, become public functionaries, and ministers, and grand cordons? Would he not rather, with that philosophy his country eminently teaches, say, I will do the pity and the compassion. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929791 | To me be the sympathetic part of a graceful sorrow. To posterity I bequeath the recognition of these poor captives. Let them be liberated, by all means; but let it be when I shall be no longer here to witness it. Let others face that glorious millennium of gorilla greatness. I am afraid he would reason in this fashion; it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929792 | is one thing to have an opinion, and to have what Frenchmen call the courage of your opinion. He would say, If Nature work surely, she works slowly; her changes are measured, regular, and progressive. With her there are no paroxysms; all is orderly--all is gradual It took centuries of centuries to advance these poor creatures to the point they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929793 | occupy; their next stage on the journey is perhaps countless years away. I will not attempt to forestall what I cannot assist. I will let Time do its work. They are not ill-treated, besides; that large creature with the yellow eyebrows grinned at me very pleasantly this morning, and the she-ourang-outang was whipping her infant most naturally as I came | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929794 | by. What a cold-blooded philanthropy is this! cries another. You say these are our brothers and our kinsmen; you declare that anatomy only can detect some small and insignificant discrepancies between us, and that even in these there are some of whose functions we know nothing, and others, such as the prehensile power, where the ape has the best of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929795 | it. What do you mean by keeping them there cribbed, cabined, and confined? Is a slight frontal inclination to disqualify a person from being a prefect? Is an additional joint in the coccyx to prevent a man sitting on the woolsack, or an extra inch in the astragalus to interfere with his wearing spurs? If there be minute differences between | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929796 | us, intercourse will abolish them. It will be of inestimable service to yourselves to come into contact with these fresh, fine, generous natures, uncontaminated by the vices of an effete and worn-out civilisation. Great as are the benefits you extend to them, they will repay you tenfold in the advantages to yourselves. Away with your unworthy prejudices about a black | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929797 | pigment and long heels! Take them to your hearts and your hearths. You will find them brave--ay, braver than your own race. Their teeth are whiter and their nails longer; there is not a relation in life in which you will dare to call yourself their better. I will go no farther, not merely because I have no liking for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929798 | my theme, but because I am pilfering. All these arguments--the very words themselves--I have stolen from an American writer, who, in Horace Greeley fashion, is addressing his countrymen on the subject of negro equality. He not alone professes to show the humanity of the project, but its policy--its even necessity. He declares to the whites, You want these people; without | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929799 | them you will sink lower and lower into that effete degeneracy into which years of licentiousness have sunk you. These gorillas--black men, I mean--are virtuous; they are abstemious; they have a little smell, but no sensuality; they will make admirable wives for your warriors; and who knows but one may be the mother of a President as strikingly handsome as | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.