The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, May, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National Policy — John Shaqi
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, May, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, May, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
the difference.' Well, it is better to swallow our humbugs, as the
Nova-Scotian did the Connecticut-cured ham, without detecting any thing
peculiar in their flavor, than it is to find our mistake at the first
cut or _saw_. By the way, saltpeter is so needed for other purposes,
that probably the _Virginia cured_ will not now have as fine a flavor as
formerly.
But, _in the way_: You dissent from some of these remarks? You've cut
your eye-teeth, have you? Possibly you forget that trip in the cars,
when you 'cutely passed by the swell in flashy waistcoat and galvanized
jewelry, and took a seat by a 'plain blunt man' in snuff-color; and
after he had left the cars at the first station, and the conductor came
to you and demanded, 'Your ticket, sir!' you probably forgot how in
fumbling for it in your pocket, you found it, but _not_ your
porte-monnaie. You perhaps set down in your mental memorandum, under the
head of Appearances, not to be deceived by plain bluntness and
snuff-color. There you were wrong; your boasted reason is of no avail in
detecting humbugs; there is no such thing as classifying them. Then,
too, we are in greater danger of being humbugged by another class of
appearances.
In material things we are compelled to acknowledge that things the most
reliable are the most unpretending. The star, by which the mariner has
steered for ages, is not a 'bright particular star;' the needle of his
compass is shaped from one of the baser metals, (though in a figurative
sense gold is highly magnetic.) The inner bears such a relation to the
outer, that the inner senses are named from the outer; we are slow to
perceive that also all objects of the outer senses, are but types of
those of the inner. You see how I have been obliged to borrow from the
outer vocabulary. I give this idea, in a nebular state, trusting that
you will consolidate it. Were we, in a figurative sense, to choose a
guiding-star, it would be a comet, we are so taken with flash and show.
A great truth, though angels heralded its birth, and a star were drawn
from its orbit to stand over its cradle, if that cradle were a manger,
we would reject it; if it assumed not the 'pomp and circumstance' of
royalty, though it worked miracles, we would cry, _Away with it_.
Eighteen hundred years have not completely transformed or transmuted the
world; we are yet ready to reject the true, and be humbugged by the
false. More than eighteen hundred and sixty-two years may yet elapse
before the bells that 'ring out the old and ring in the new,' will 'ring
out the false and ring in the true.' Then farewell humbug.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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