"Who dares bestow the infant his true name?

The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave

Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell

Incapable to keep their full hearts in,

They, from the first of immemorial time,

Were crucified or burnt."--Goethe's "Faust."

The pains and penalties of folly are not necessarily death. They

were in old times, perhaps, according to the text, and he who kept

not to himself the secrets of his silly heart was surely crucified

or burnt. Though lacking in penalties extreme like these, the present

is not without its own. All times, indeed, have their penalties for

folly, much more certainly than for crime; and this fact furnishes

one of the most human arguments in favor of the doctrine of rewards

and punishments in the future state. But these penalties are not

always mortifications and trials of the flesh. There are punishments

of the soul; the spirit; the sensibilities; the intellect--which

are most usually the consequences of one's own folly. There is a

perversity of mood which is the worst of all such penalties. There

are tortures which the foolish heart equally inflicts and endures.

The passions riot on their own nature; and, feeding as they do

upon that bosom from which they spring, and in which they flourish,

may, not inaptly, be likened to that unnatural brood which gnaws

into the heart of the mother-bird, and sustains its existence at

the expense of hers. Meetly governed from the beginning, they are

dutiful agents that bless themselves in their own obedience; but,

pampered to excess, they are tyrants that never do justice, until

at last, when they fitly conclude the work of destruction by their

own.

The narrative which follows is intended to illustrate these opinions.

It is the story of a blind heart--nay, of blind hearts--blind

through their own perversity--blind to their own interests--their

own joys, hopes, and proper sources of delight. In narrating my

own fortunes, I depict theirs; and the old leaven of wilfulness,

which belongs to our nature, has, in greater or less degree, a

place in every human bosom.

I was the only one surviving of several sons. My parents died while

I was yet an infant. I never knew them. I was left to the doubtful

charge of relatives, who might as well have been strangers; and,

from their treatment, I learned to doubt and to distrust among the

first fatal lessons of my youth. I felt myself unloved--nay, as I

fancied, disliked and despised. I was not merely an orphan. I was

poor, and was felt as burdensome by those connections whom a dread

of public opinion, rather than a sense of duty and affection,

persuaded to take me to their homes. Here, then, when little more

than three years old, I found myself--a lonely brat, whom servants

might flout at pleasure, and whom superiors only regarded with a

frown. I was just old enough to remember that I had once experienced

very different treatment. I had felt the caresses of a fond mother--I

had heard the cheering accents of a generous and a gentle father.

The one had soothed my griefs and encouraged my hopes--the other

had stimulated my energies and prompted my desires. Let no one

fancy that, because I was a child, these lessons were premature.

All education, to be valuable, must begin with the child's first

efforts at discrimination. Suddenly, both of these fond parents

disappeared, and I was just young enough to wonder why.




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