The Investment of Influence: A Study of Social Sympathy and Service. Newell Dwight Hillis
the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered and reared some twenty orphans—gave them home and bed and food; taught them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead face. It must have been so. She "had a beautiful soul," as Emerson said of Longfellow. Poverty disfigured the apple woman's garret, and want made it wretched, nevertheless, God's most beautiful angels hovered over it. Her life was a blossom event in London's history. Social reform has felt her influence. Like a broken vase the perfume of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone.
The Greek poet says men knew when the goddess came to Thebes because of the blessings she left in her track. Her footprints were not in the sea, soon obliterated, nor in the snow, quickly melting, but in fields and forests. This unseen friend, passing by the tree blackened by a thunderbolt, stayed her step; lo! the woodbine sprang up and covered the tree's nakedness. She lingered by the stagnant pool—the pool became a flowing spring. She rested upon a fallen log—from decay and death came moss, the snowdrop and the anemone. At the crossing of the brook were her footprints; not in mud downward, but in violets that sprang up in her pathway. O beautiful prophecy! literally fulfilled 2,000 years afterward in the life of the London apple woman, whose atmosphere sweetened bitter hearts and made evil into good.
Wealth and eminent position witness not less powerfully the transforming influence of exalted characters. "My lords," said Salisbury, "the reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the presence here of one man—Lord Shaftesbury. The genius of his life was expressed when last he addressed you. He said: 'When I feel age creeping upon me I am deeply grieved, for I cannot bear to go away and leave the world with so much misery in it.'" So long as Shaftesbury lived, England beheld a standing rebuke of all wrong and injustice. How many iniquities shriveled up in his presence! This man, representing the noblest ancestry, wealth and culture, wrought numberless reforms. He became a voice for the poor and weak. He gave his life to reform acts and corn laws; he emancipated the enslaved boys and girls toiling in mines and factories; he exposed and made impossible the horrors of that inferno in which chimney-sweeps live; he founded twoscore industrial, ragged and trade schools; he established shelters for the homeless poor; when Parliament closed its sessions at midnight Lord Shaftesbury went forth to search out poor prodigals sleeping under Waterloo or Blackfriars bridge, and often in a single night brought a score to his shelter. When the funeral cortege passed through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey, the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable thousands. The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me." The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal character. To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury—the fitting motto therefor; "The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the presence and influence of Shaftesbury." If our generation is indeed held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and weak.
But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel. Not time, but man, is the great destroyer. History is full of the ruins of cities and empires. "Innumerable Paradises have come and gone; Adams and Eves many," happy one day, have been "miserable exiles" the next; and always because some satanic ambition or passion or person entering has cast baneful shadow o'er the scene. Men talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time. But, said the art historian: "Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm; we who smite like the scythe. Fancy what treasures would be ours to-day if the delicate statues and temples of the Greeks, if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans, if the noble architecture, castles and towns of the Middle Ages had not been ground to dust by blind rage of man. It is man that is the consumer; he is moth and mildew and flame." All the galleries and temples and libraries and cities have been destroyed by his baneful presence. Thrice armies have made an arsenal of the Acropolis; ground the precious marbles to powder, and mixed their dust with his ashes. It was man's ax and hammer that dashed down the carved work of cathedrals and turned the treasure cities into battle-fields, and opened galleries to the mold of sea winds. Disobedience to law has made cities a heap and walled cities ruins. Man is the pestilence that walketh in darkness. Man is the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
When Mephistopheles appears in human form his presence falls upon homes like the black pall of the consuming plague, that robes cities for death. The classic writer tells of an Indian princess sent as a present to Alexander the Great. She was lovely as the dawn; yet what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath; richer than a garden of Persian roses. A sage physician discovered her terrible secret. This lovely woman had been reared upon poisons from infancy until she herself was the deadliest poison known. When a handful of sweet flowers was given to her, her bosom scorched and shriveled the petals; when the rich perfume of her breath went among a swarm of insects, a score fell dead about her. A pet humming-bird entering her atmosphere, shuddered, hung for a moment in the air, then dropped in its final agony. Her love was poison; her embrace death. This tale has held a place in literature because it stands for men of evil all compact, whose presence has consumed integrities and exhaled iniquities. Happily the forces that bless are always more numerous and more potent than those that blight. Cast a bushel of chaff and one grain of wheat into the soil and nature will destroy all the chaff but cause the one grain of wheat to usher in rich harvests.
As a force-producer, man's primary influence is voluntary in nature. This is the capacity of purposely bringing all the soul's powers to bear upon society. It is the foundation of all instruction. The parent influences the child this way or that. The artist-master plies his pupil. The brave general or discoverer inspires and stimulates his men by multiform motives. The charioteer holds the reins, guides his steeds, restrains or lifts the scourge. Similarly man holds the reins of influence over man, and is himself in turn guided. So friend shapes and molds friend. This is what gives its meaning to conversation, oratory, journalism, reforms. Each man stands at the center of a great network of voluntary influence for good. Through words, bearing and gesture, he sends out his energies. Oftentimes a single speech has effected great reforms. Oft one man's act has deflected the stream of the centuries. Full oft a single word has been like a switch that turns a train from the route running toward the frozen North, to a track leading into the tropic South.
Not seldom has a youth been turned from the way of integrity by the influence of a single friend. Endowed as man is, the weight of his being effects the most astonishing results. Witness Stratton's conversation with the drunken bookbinder whom we know as John B. Gough, the apostle of temperance. Witness Moffat's words that changed David Livingstone, the weaver, into David Livingstone, the savior of Africa. Witness Garibaldi's words fashioning the Italian mob into the conquering army. Witness Garrison and Beecher and Phillips and John Bright. Rivers, winds, forces of fire and steam are impotent compared to those energies of mind and heart, that make men equal to transforming whole communities and even nations. Who can estimate the soul's conscious power? Who can measure the light and heat of last summer? Who can gather up the rays of the stars? Who can bring together the odors of last year's orchards? There are no mathematics for computing the influence of man's voluntary thought, affection and aspiration upon his fellows.
Man has also an unpurposed influence. Power goes forth without his distinct volition. Like all centers of energy, the soul does its best work automatically. The sun does not think of lifting the mist from the ocean, yet the vapor moves skyward. Often man is ignorant of what he accomplishes upon his fellows, but the results are the same. He is surcharged with energy. Accomplishing much by plan, he does more through unconscious weight of personality. In wonder-words we are told the apostle purposely wrought deeds of mercy upon the poor. Yet through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless, involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent. The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very presence chills like a cold,