No More Learning

As the members of the new body
were drawn from the First Parish, Mr. Wilbur was for a time considerably
exercised in mind. He even went so far as on one occasion to follow the
reprehensible practice of the earlier Puritan divines in choosing a
punning text, and preached from Hebrews xiii, 9: 'Be not carried about
with _divers_ and strange doctrines. ' He afterwards, in accordance with
one of his own maxims,--'to get a dead injury out of the mind as soon as
is decent, bury it, and then ventilate,'--in accordance with this maxim,
I say, he lived on very friendly terms with Rev. Shearjashub Scrimgour,
present pastor of the Baptist Society in Jaalam. Yet I think it was
never unpleasing to him that the church edifice of that society (though
otherwise a creditable specimen of architecture) remained without a
bell, as indeed it does to this day. So much seemed necessary to do away
with any appearance of acerbity toward a respectable community of
professing Christians, which might be suspected in the conclusion of the
above paragraph. --J. H. ]


In lighter moods he was not averse from an innocent play upon words.
Looking up from his newspaper one morning, as I entered his study, he
said, 'When I read a debate in Congress, I feel as if I were sitting at
the feet of Zeno in the shadow of the Portico. ' On my expressing a
natural surprise, he added, smiling, 'Why, at such times the only view
which honorable members give me of what goes on in the world is through
their intercalumniations. ' I smiled at this after a moment's reflection,
and he added gravely, 'The most punctilious refinement of manners is the
only salt that will keep a democracy from stinking; and what are we to
expect from the people, if their representatives set them such lessons?
Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text.
There was, at
least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the
tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle
blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay. ' In
this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his
upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A. D.
1844, occasioned by the wild notions in respect to the rights of (what
Mr. Wilbur, so far as concerned the reasoning faculty, always called)
the unfairer part of creation, put forth by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz,
are too well known to need more than a passing allusion. It was during
these heats, long since happily allayed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that
'the Church had more trouble in dealing with one _she_resiarch than with
twenty _he_resiarchs,' and that the men's _conscia recti_, or certainty
of being right, was nothing to the women's.

When I once asked his opinion of a poetical composition on which I had
expended no little pains, he read it attentively, and then remarked
'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is
wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into
rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate
with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My
Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your
emotions there. But, my dear sir, watering does not improve the quality
of ink, even though you should do it with tears. To publish a sorrow to
Tom, Dick, and Harry is in some sort to advertise its unreality, for I
have observed in my intercourse with the afflicted that the deepest
grief instinctively hides its face with its hands and is silent. If your
piece were printed, I have no doubt it would be popular, for people like
to fancy that they feel much better than the trouble of feeling. I would
put all poets on oath whether they have striven to say everything they
possibly could think of, or to leave out all they could not help saying.