Day-Dreams

Caspar Rauchbilder was a German, abstruse of mind, and able of body. From his ancestors he inherited a blond complexion and a talent for boiling sugar, so that he had no trouble in acquiring either. His calling he pursued far eastward of London’s famous tower, somewhere near the docks, and where many chimneys feed the murky air of Wapping. But the thick atmosphere suited Caspar’s thoughtful turn; it favored mental abstraction, and kept aloof those obtrusive materialisms which he deemed the main obstacles to transcendental discovery. His favorite motto was, ‘VE:r fumo ilare luccmf* and, in order to enhance the partial opacity of his abode, he plied a perpetual meerschaum. He used to say that it was no wonder that the Egyp-

“Smoke is the sire of light;” — a witty allusion the lampblack in printers’ ink.

CASPAR KAUCHBILDERiftf tians were the wisest nation of antiquity, after three days of such glorious darkness as they had once enjoyed; and he often thought that if, like a celebrated lawyer, he could live in a cavern, he would yet be able to throw some light on the world.

It was the ninth of November, and Caspar’s more frivolous companions had gone to the lord-mayor’s show. They went, but they saw It not. Like the railway train, which dives from rustic gaze into the heart of a mountain, the show was tunneling its invisible progress through the heart of a London fog, and it was only by the snort of trombones and the racket of drums that Cockaigne was conscious when civic majesty passed along. Our sage found higher employment for the holyday. Just as the candle in a sixpenny cathedral — such as Italian stucco merchants display on area-rails — just as that candle begins to come red and green through the colored windows, when evening shrouds the city, and street-lamps are being lit, so Caspar was conscious this misty day of bright gleams in his censorium; and he determined on improving the inward light. Before the fire he hung a shaggy coat, which he called a bosom friend; and it deserved the name. The bosom friend was somewhat damp, for the fog had beaded all the nap with a dirty dew. And on the table Caspar placed a German sausage and a dish of Hamburg kraut. But, ere cloggmg his faculties with this slight refection, our philosopher thought good to improve the fit of inward clear-seeing with which he then and there felt visited. Accordingly, setding down in his easy chair, and inspissating the atmosphere with volumes of tobacco, he began to see his way through the system of the universe.

And it was not long before the sugarboiler beheld himself a social reformer. He recollected how often he had seen the gray or yellow dust arrive at their factory, and leave it the brilliant sugar-loaf And in that raw article he viewed an emblem of human nature, as it comes from the hand of priests and princes, and in that sugar-loaf he saw human nature as it quits the mill of the philosopher. There is first the boiling i?i vacuo. He would put society into the caldron, but would be careful not to raise the temperature above hot water. And, in order to secure a perfect vacuum, he would relieve it of all prejudices and all property. He would pump off those national codes and positive faiths which now weigh with tremendous pressure on the human soul; and as soon as that was accomplished, it would be the work of a moment to bring sentiment and principle into a state of absolute solution — the first object to be sought by a regenerator of the social system. The next business is to clarify the melted mass. Nothing can be easier. “In our works,” pursued the seer,” have we not a filter of charred bones? and have I not seen the current pass into that strainer brown as sherry, and quit it clear as crystal? In like manner let us burn the bones of the old beliefs and - the outworn decencies. Ha, ha! they are now but skeletons! And from the ashes we will make a filter, through which this selfish age shall pass and emerge a new moral world. And then, in order to preserve this sweet sirup of refined humanity, it must be caught in moulds, and consolidated, and cast, and kept. For this purpose, one recommends as the best form pyramids, and Fourier doats about phalanxes. But these simpletons had never seen a sugar factory. Their purblind optics were never blessed with the sight of an unbroken sugar-loaf. Talk of circles, phalanxes, and pyramids, as if nature abhorred the cone! Is it not the most comprehensive of all figures, embodying the triangle, the circle, the ellipse, the parabola, the hyperbola? and the most graceful, suggesting at once the solidity of the pyramid, and the curving fullness of the sphere? Away with all compromise! I vow to reconstruct society on the only perfect model. I shall teach every man to be the lover of all, and the friend of none; and this pure and public-spirited product I shall fix — T shall stereotype. While yet fluent and limpid, I shall draw it off into moulds ready-made; and in cones of concord, in sugar-loaves of sympathy, society will crystallize into its final and perfect organization. And should there settle down at the inverted apex any dregs of the old system, is there not the turning-lathe to pare away the antisocial feculence? All shall be alike talented, alike strong and healthy; and all equally amiable, rich, and happy. Our crest must be the sugar-cone; our motto,

SOLIDITY, SINCERITY, SUAVITY.”

At this point of the speculation, there mingled with the odor of meerschaum a smell more akin to burning bones. It was not an old belief or an outworn morality, but the peajacket too near the fire. The bosom friend was burning. Caspar brushed the singed and smoking nap, and put his fingers through the brown and crumbling skirt; and, lighting a lanrip, he found that a neighboring cur had played an old prank, and stolen the sausage during his revery. However, Caspar comforted himself. The cur had stolen the sausage, but he had left the sauer-kraut and the sugar-loaf theory.

Should the reader be acquainted with any of the works lately published on the organization of labor and the reconstruction of society, he will not laugh at the reveries of Caspar Rauchbilder. Nor will he expect us to refute them. If it be idle work to build castles in the air, it is idle work besieHno them.

We know, however, that such speculations are intereslino; to two classes of readers. There are some profligate persons who catch at everything which puts good for evil, or which offers to relieve them from moral obligation. They are tired of their wives and children; they are tired of working; they are tired of honesty; they would fain be fingering the hard-earned savings of their fellow-laborers; and they do not like

the Christian ordinance, “If any man will not work, neither shall he eat.” They would be glad to have the pocket of the shadowless man, so that if hungry they might produce a tray with green pease and smoking cutlets, or if drowsy they might put in their hand and pull out a posted bed with its blankets. But as the shadowless man will not part with his pocket, they will be content, as next best, to eat their neighbor’s cutlet and sleep in their neighbor’s blankets.

But besides the lazy and licentious, to whom all such schemes are welcome, we believe that at this moment many an industrious man feels so unhappy, that he would hail any change in the social system as a possible change for the better. And if, like us, he has read some of the glowing invectives and prophecies of these eager speculators, the wish may very naturally prove father to the thought, and he may fancy that nothing except a rearrangement of society is needful to bring about a golden age.

We, too, are social reformers. We see many tliinf]:s which grieve us. We see much extravagance among the rich, and much improvidence among the poor. We see a great deal of pride and bitterness. We see the pride of rank, which believes that itself is porcelain and that common men are clay. We see the bitterness of penury, which resents the wealth of others as a crime, and which deems it a proof of spirit to insult a man of higher station. We see a fearful amount of tyranny. We see the tyranny of squires and capitalists, refusing to their tenants and their servants the enjoyment of the sabbath and freedom to worship God. And we see the tyranny of working-men, compelling their fellows to connive at crime, and enforcing compliance with unreasonable rules, often by means of the greatest cruelty. These things we know, and we mourn over them. We long to see them all redressed. We long to see the rich less stiff, and reserved, and haughty. We long to secure for cottages and cabins, not only the Christmas dole, but the kind words, and the friendly recognition, and the occasional call. We long to see toleration and fair play. We long to see industry and a competency convertible terms; and we long to see the laborious classes kindly affectioned one to another, and respectful of the rights and the feelings of their hard-working brethren. And on every side we long to see more magnanimity, more confidence, and more mutual forbearance.

But we have no faith in any social reform which overlooks the fact that man is a fallen being. Though we had never read it in’ the Bible, we think we could read it in the world, that man is no longer what a holy Creator made him. His Jieart is not right with God, nor is it right with his fellows. And every ameliorating scheme which overlooks this twofold depravity is sure to end in frustration.

For many ages the mechanical world labored to create a perpetual motion. As soon as a man had learned a little algebra, or a little of the art of en<iine-makino:, he attacked this doughty prohlcni. And you may have seen some of the quaint contrivances which resuhed from these attempts; cylinders revolving to ever-falling weights within them, and polished balls descending a self-restoring incline. But as discovery advanced, it was found that all these efforts were based on a false assumption: that they forgot the force called friction. And as it is now generally conceded that the discoverer of this sleepless mechanism will be the first man who annihilates the attraction of matter, perpetual motion is reserved for the amusement of those eccentric geniuses who are best kept from mischief by a perpetual puzzle, and is seldom studied except in such collesjes asHanwell and St. Luke’s. But the problem which has been abandoned in physics is now revived in the domain of ethics, and people ask,” How are we to create within the race a constant progress toward perfection? Taking man as he is, and taking such aids as he can himself supply, how are we to abolish misday-drea:lis. 193

ery, and make the earth a second paradise?” And many solutions have been offered. The press teems vvitii them. One day last summer we read the plan most popular. The brilliant writer proposes that the working men of France should resolve themselves, or that government should group them, into huge industrial families, for five francs apiece working eight hours a day; leaving it to each man’s sense of honor how busily he shall labor, and requiring the clever and the diligent to support the stupid and the lazy. And when we read it, we said to ourselves, “perpetual motion once more! This sanguine projector has overlooked friction. The scheme might answer tvith angelic operatives; but if tried in a world like ours, there are two things which will bring it to a speedy stand-still: the one is man’s irreligion; the other is his selfishness. He would need to be a true philanthropist who would work with a steady eye to his neighbor’s welfare; and he would need to be a God-fearino- man who would ]7 persist to labor when lie knew that, if ho slept or played, his neighbors would labor for him.” And, curiously enough, the same day brought an American paper of May 13. where, among other news, we read, “While socialism is going up in Europe, it is going down in this country. The Northampton association of industry was abandoned, after having incurred a debt of 40,000 dollars, and Hopedale has relinquished the community principle, and goes upon the individual plan.” And so must it ever be, till the two grand obstacles are done away. Till irreligion is exchanged for piety, and till selfishness is superseded by brotherly love, the world must proceed on the individual plan. And till then, Hopedale must count on many disappointments, and old Discord will resume his reign in the halls of each New Harmony.

Some people once built a bridge; but it was scarcely erected when it tumbled down. They tried it a second time with no better success. And a third time they changed the plan, and took every precaution, and allowed a long interval for the mortar to harden; but no sooner had they removed the centrings than up sprang the key-stone, and in bulged the arches, and with a crash and a plunge the wholesale ruin poured into the tide below. On this, a council of practical men was convened. The architect came, armed with his plans so prettily drawn, which he flourished as on a fieldday a marshal will flourish his baton. And rival architects came, not so much to suggest, as to enjoy a little quiet exultation. But the man of skill, and the main hope of the conclave, was a civil engineer from the capital. For a long time he said nothing; but he had evidently scanned it all in a single glance, and it was clear that he was only tracing symbols in the dust with his cane, till the common herd had talked themselves out, and he should be summoned to pronounce his oracle. “Of course,” was that oracle, “the span is too wide, and the ellipsis by far too eccentric.” —” Impossi-

ble!” said the horrified architect; “the first plan had arches as round as the Iloman, and it went like a house of cards.” This by no means shook the judgment of the man of skill; but it emboldened a plai i man, who once wrought as a mason ii. that country-side, but who had saved a little money, and was now doing business on his own behalf. “Truly, sirs, I wonder that you think of nothing but arches, and abutments, and spans. Just look at that brick;” and so saying, -n his great hand he crushed a fragment as if it were touchwood or toadstool. “I never knew a brick come from these fields which would bear the weight of its neighbor. It is not the fault of the plan; it is all the blame of the bricks.” And it would be well if projectors in politics and morals adverted more to the strength OF THEIR MATERIALS. Like bricks from the same kiln, some specimens of human nature may be better than others; but in building a social structure for Britain or the world, you must look, not to picked sampies, but to tile ordinary run. You must look not to patriots, and saints, and the martyrs of favorite schemes; but you must look at your neighbors, and your shopmates, and the mass of your fellow-townsmen, and say if you are prepared to cast away all your present securities for peace and comfort, and fling- yourself entirely on the honor of each and the charities of all? For if you distrust your neighbors as they are, no new arrangement into groups or ateliers, into phalanxes or cones, will make them trustworthy. A Hew bad bricks will spoil the finest arch; but the finest arch will not convert to marble or adamant blocks of untempered chiy.

We love our fellow-men, and we long for their greater happiness; but so profoundly do we believe that “the imagination of man’s heart is only evil” — so persuaded are we that our world, as yet, contains little loyalty to God, and little love of man to man — that we have no faith in any self-restoring system. It is not a new construclion which society needs, so much as new material. Nor can we promise ourselves a political millennium. Doubtless it is the duty of every citizen to give efficiency to such good government as he enjoys; and it is the duty of every state to aim at constitutional optimism; to seek such a code of laus, and such a distribution of power, as will make it easiest for the citizens to do what is right, and mot difficult to do what is wrono;. But there is no mastic in political change. No form of government — republican, representative, or despotic — can cure the real complaint of our species. No law can change vice into virtue, or give to guilt the joys of innocence. No ruler can make the atheist happy, or kindle a blessed hope in that mephitic mind which has quenched its own lamp of immortality. When Hercules put on the poisoned robe, it did not matter where he went: no change of climate, no breezy height, no balmy sky could lull the venom in his fiery veins. Restless and roaming, he wandered to and fro, and raged at everything; but the real quarrel was with his tainted self, and the change which would have reHeved his misery would have been a migration from his own writhing nerves and stounding bones. And let a man of idle or immoral habits, or let an ill-assorted family, try all the constituUons in the world — or let a new constitution come to their own country once a-year — and they will soon discover that to a guilty conscience, or a dissolute character, political day-springs bring no healing. Legislation contains no charm — no spell for converting personal or domestic wretchedness into virtue and tranquillity; and so long as a man is entangled in his own corruption — so long as he wears the poisoned vest of inherent depravity — “he may change the place, but he can not cheat the pain.”

Is there, then, you will ask, no hope for society? Is the present routine of selfishness, oppression, and suffering, to go on for ever? Assuredly not. But it will come to an end in no other way except that which God has designed and foretold. It will end when he himself interposes. Till then, visionaries, amiahle or atheistic, may each propound his panacea; hut, alas! the plague of society is too virulent for any medicine native to our earth. And no doubt elaborate attempts will be made, and associations will be formed, with a view to counteract the dispersive elements in human nature. Influential leaders, poetical statesmen, and discarded projectors, will say, “Go to, let us build us a city and a lower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth;” but the feuds and the jargon which confounded the plain of Shinar, will prove fatal to Babel the Second. And it is not till the Prince of Peace shall commence his reign of righteousness, and, simultaneous with his enthronement, the Spirit of God shall mollify the minds of men, that “violence” shall vanish from our earth, and “wasting and destruction” from within its borders. And when that day comes — when, by the direct interference of the Holy Spirit, man’s enmity to God is converted into allegiance and love, and man’s selfishness is drowned in kindness and good-will — many of the results for which men at present sigh will no longer need perilous experiments, but will develop of their own accord. When the years are all one pentecost, and the world one Christian family, none will lack, and, if they please, people may then have “all things in common.”* “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”

And, in the meanwhile, the reader may secure his own happiness without overturning an empire or new-moulding society. Like Caspar Rauchbilder, you run the risk of losing some solid and immediate advan- * Acts ii. and iv.

tages, while musing on remote and wholesale reformations. The present state of society may be vicious; but, in the most essential matters, your Creator has rendered you independent of society. By making you the custodier of your own soul, he has luade you the keeper of your own comfort. And if you be wise, you will go so far on the individual plan as to study the gospel, and seek the one thing needful for yourself. So far as you are concerned, that gospel is a personal message. To you and me, my brother, God offers a personal salvation. And if we believe that gospel, and live godly, righteous, and sober in the world, whatever be the state of society, we shall secure our personal happiness here and hereafter. Perhaps, too, we shall then be able to do something in order to mitigate the misery and increase the happiness of those around us.