The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862. Various
budding Daphne wanted scope
To bourgeon all her flowers of hope.
She felt a cramp around her root
That crippled every outmost shoot.
I set me to the kindly task;
I found a trim and tidy cask,
Shapely and painted; straightway seized
The timely waif; and, quick released
From earthen bound and sordid thrall,
My Daphne sat there, proud and tall.
Stately and tall, like any queen,
She spread her farthingale of green;
Nor stinted aught with larger fate,
For that she was innately great.
I learned, in accidental way,
A secret, on an after-day,–
A chance that marked the simple change
As something ominous and strange.
And so, therefrom, with anxious care,
Almost with underthought of prayer,
As, day by day, my listening soul
Waited to catch the coming roll
Of pealing victory, that should bear
My country's triumph on the air,–
I tended gently all the more
The plant whose life a portent bore.
The weary winter wore away,
And still we waited, day by day;
And still, in full and leafy pride,
My Daphne strengthened at my side,
Till her fair buds outburst their bars,
And whitened gloriously to stars!
Above each stalwart, loyal stem
Rested their heavenly diadem,
And flooded forth their incense rare,
A breathing Joy, upon the air!
Well might my backward thought recall
The cramp, the hindrance, and the thrall,
The strange release to larger space,
The issue into growth and grace,
And joyous hail the homely sign
That so had spelled a hope divine!
For all this life, and light, and bloom,
This breath of Peace that blessed the room,
Was born from out the banded rim,
Once crowded close, and black, and grim,
With grains that feed the Cannon's breath,
And boom his sentences of death!
CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE
"On the whole, it was very disagreeable," wrote a certain great traveller and hunter, summing up an account of his position, as he composed himself to rest upon a certain evening after a hard day's work. And no doubt it must have been very disagreeable. The night was cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,–each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth which was wrapped up to serve as a pillow, appeared to indicate that a snake was wriggling about underneath it. The hunter had some ground for thinking that it was a very venomous one, as indeed in the morning it proved to be; but he was too tired to look. And speaking of the general condition of matters upon that evening, the hunter stated, with great mildness of language, that "it was very disagreeable."
Most readers would be disposed to say that disagreeable was hardly the right word. No doubt, all things that are perilous, horrible, awful, ghastly, deadly, and the like, are disagreeable too. But when we use the word disagreeable by itself, our meaning is understood to be, that in calling the thing disagreeable we have said the worst of it. A long and tiresome sermon is disagreeable; but a venomous snake under your pillow passes beyond being disagreeable. To have a tooth stopped is disagreeable; to be broken on the wheel (though nobody could like it) transcends that. If a thing be horrible and awful, you would not say it was disagreeable. The greater includes the less: as when a human being becomes entitled to write D.D. after his name, he drops all mention of the M.A. borne in preceding years.
Let this truth be remembered, by such as shall read the following pages. We are to think about disagreeable people. Let it be understood that (speaking generally) we are to think of people who are no worse than disagreeable. It cannot be denied, even by the most prejudiced, that murderers, pirates, slave-drivers, and burglars, are disagreeable. The cut-throat, the poisoner, the sneaking black-guard who shoots his landlord from behind a hedge, are no doubt disagreeable people,–so very disagreeable that in this country the common consent of mankind removes them from human society by the instrumentality of a halter. But disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all that, and a great deal more. And accordingly they stand beyond the range of this dissertation. We are to treat of folk who are disagreeable, and not worse than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, overstep the boundary-line. But it is to be remembered that there are people who in the main are good people, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And a further complication is introduced into the subject by the fact, that some people who are far from good are yet unquestionably agreeable. You disapprove them; but you cannot help liking them. Others, again, are substantially good; yet you are angry with yourself to find that you cannot like them.
I take for granted that all observant human beings will admit that in this world there are disagreeable people. Probably the distinction which presses itself most strongly upon our attention, as we mingle in the society of our fellow-men, is the distinction between agreeable people and disagreeable. There are various tests, more or less important, which put all mankind to right and left. A familiar division is into rich and poor. Thomas Paine, with great vehemence, denied the propriety of that classification, and declared that the only true and essential classification of mankind is into male and female. I have read a story whose author maintained, that, to his mind, by far the most interesting and thorough division of our race is into such as have been hanged and such as have not been hanged: he himself belonging to the former class. But we all, more or less, recognize and act upon the great classification of all human beings into the agreeable and the disagreeable. And we begin very early to recognize and act upon it. Very early in life, the little child understands and feels the vast difference between people who are nice and people who are not nice. In school-boy days, the first thing settled as to any new acquaintance, man or boy, is on which side he stands of the great boundary-line. It is not genius, not scholarship, not wisdom, not strength nor speed, that fixes the man's place. None of these things is chiefly looked to: the question is, Is he agreeable or disagreeable? And according as that question is decided, the man is described, in the forcible language of youth, as "a brick," or as "a beast."
Yet it is to be remembered that the division between the agreeable and disagreeable of mankind is one which may be transcended. It is a scratch on the earth,–not a ten-foot wall. And you will find men who pass from one side of it to the other, and back again,–probably several times in a week, or even in a day. There are people whom you never know where to have. They are constantly skipping from side to side of that line of demarcation; or they even walk along with a foot on each side of it. There are people who are always disagreeable,