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will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier, but less despotic as Montesquieu supposes than in some other countries, and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts, and a great deal more blood was spilt. In Turkey, where the sole nod of the despot is death, insurrections are the events of every day. Compare again the ferocious depredations of their insurgents with the order, the moderation, and the almost self-extinguishment of ours. And say finally whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. After all, it is my principle that the will of the majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed Constitution in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes they will amend it whenever they shall find it works wrong. This reliance cannot deceive us as long as we remain virtuous; and I think we shall be so as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case while there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there. I have tired you by this time with disquisitions which you have already heard repeated by others a thousand and a thousand times; and therefore shall only add assurances of the esteem and attachment with which I have the honor to be, dear sir, your affectionate friend and servant.

P. S. The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions, that there shall always be a welvemonth between the engrossing a bill and passing it; that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word; and that if circumstances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two-thirds of both Houses, instead of a bare majority.

JEROME KLAPKA JEROME.

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JEROME KLAPKA JEROME, an English novelist, playwright, and journalist, was born at Walsall, Staffordshire, May 2, 1861. He was educated at the Marylebone Philological School; but in very early life, he was thrown upon his own resources. He sought employment in London, where he became successively clerk, schoolmaster, short-hand writer, reporter, actor, and journalist. In 1885 he published "On the Stage and Off," being his theatrical autobiography. "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow," followed in 1886; and in the same year his "Barbara,” a one-act comedy, was produced. The comedies "Sunset" and "Wood-Barrow Farm," and "Fennel," were produced in 1888. "Stageland" and a humorous story entitled "Three Men in a Boat," his best known and most popular production, were published in 1889. In 1890 he produced for the stage "New Lamps for Old," a farce; and "Ruth," a play. His "Diary of a Pilgrimage" was published in 1890. The "Councillor's Wife," a comedy, appeared upon the American stage in 1893; and in the same year he published "Novel Notes" and "John Ingerfield and Other Stories." In 1892, in co-editorship with Robert Barr, he started The Idler, a magazine; and in 1893 he founded the weekly magazine-journal To-Day. "Stories of the Town," including"Blasé Billy," and "The Prude's Progress" and "Dick Hulward," were published in 1896; "Letters to Clorinda" (1898).

CHANGE AND REST.

(From "Three Men in a Boat.")

THERE were four of us-George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking and talking about how bad we were bad from a medical point of view, I mean, of course.

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We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times that he hardly knew what he was doing, and then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my

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liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liverpill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patentmedicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch hay-fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into some fearful, devastating scourge, I know-and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid-fever read the symptoms-discovered that I had typhoid-fever, must have had it for months without knowing it

wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's dance -found, as I expected, that I had that too-began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learned that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After awhile, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most ma

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