No More Learning

To
me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my
study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a
strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage, narrow as
it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little.
Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown-paper
wrapper!

'Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or
dromedary-back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the
magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters
of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they
seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as
showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The
earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope
of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out
anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis
Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray
surtout and cocked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France
that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming
juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in
motion, is an immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a
mite brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great
Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible
cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as
minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous
philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the
Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a
revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever
with which he is to move the world.
And lo, there creeps forward the
shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth,
and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into
the dark Beyond.

'Yes, the little show-box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we
catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-glass
in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim
background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his
mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on
their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from
christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look)
a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him,
whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a
handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the
same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess,
not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also.

'Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to this
great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas (only that we
like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose
scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.

'Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the
wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant
sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths
and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of
promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents,
of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty;--I hold in my hand the ends of
myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys,
sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women
everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me
from mankind as a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes,
in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some
import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families
take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them?
Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And,
strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me
informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins?