Table Talk [pp. 636-638]

18'70.jLITERA TURL SCIENCL AND AI?R 637
contemporary, "with a view to future indolence, others to serve self ish ambition, and others-lamentably few in number-as a means of
doing good." Now this is sentimental nonsense, written in entire mis conception of the natural laws of wealth. Men who accumulate wealth
are sure to do good to others, no matter if they should be wicked enough
to desire otherwise. All forms of industry are maintained by accumu lated wealth; the energies that are directed by capital-which is ac cumulated riches-build steamers, dig canals, construct railways, erect
bridges, set in operation factories, cheapen by multiplying products,
and in fact render civilization possible. All the ten thousand com forts that we enjoy are the result of "selfish ambition," coupled with
a love of "future indolence." To these two things we owe every ma terial good we have. If wealth had never been accumulated for self ish ends-if everybody had been animated with a desire of "doing good
to others," if that means, as we suppose, eleemosynary distribution capital would have been wasted, industry in consequence would have
languished, men would have been rendered vicious by enforced idleness
and encouraged -mendicancy, and social chaos rather than social
progress would have been the result. A man with a million of money,
who distributes it in alms ever so judiciously, can only afford a tem porary relief to deserving poverty; but a similar amount employed in
erecting factories or in organizing productive industries, supplies, no
matter how selfish may be the motives, the onfily permanent security
'against poverty and destitution that can be devised. Accumulation is
the primary necessity of industry; it is not demand, as some suppose,
that determines the employment of labor-this regulates only the di rection that labor shall take; capital, and capital alone, is the sus tenance of industry. Men, therefore, do well to accumulate, do well
for themselves and for others; and these lamentations about the self ishness that induces men to accumulate wealth to their own advantage
are simply sentimental ignorance. There is nothing new in what we
have said-and nothing disputable either. We have uttered only the
simplest elementary axioms of political economy.
- We find among new English periodicals one of a very novel
nature. It is called-and its title tells its mission fully-" The Po.
deical Magazine: a Monthly Periodical devoted to the Writings of
Amateur Poets." This odd notion may seem at first sight absurd,
but absolutely we know of no literary scheme more likely to confer
lasting benefit, not merely upon a class, but upon the whole public at
large. The necessity of printing, after one has written, has been felt
and recognized by all scribblers. "The spirits that I have raised
haunt me," said Shelley, "until I have sent them to the devil of a
printer;" and every one who has made diagnoses of those afflicted
with the cacoethes scribendi has observed that the fever for writing can
only be abated by ink-letting. This necessity has led to more dire inflictions upon editors primarily, and the public secondarily, than is
within our power to compute. Every man who has ever conducted a
periodical knows what sufferings an editor has to endure from ambitious rhymesters; how ceaselessly he is beset with earnest letters from
hopeful poets, urging upon his attention their little effusions; and what
endless offence he is always giving by not inserting three or four times
as many verses as his entire space would contain. Editors and publishers stand as breakwaters between the public and vast floods of
untutored verse, and they only know the extent, the force, the persistence, of the assaulting enemy. A poetical magazine would afford
a natural outlet for all these pent-up forces, relieve the ordinary periedicals from a most uncomfortable pressure, and afford a good many
clever versifiers a chance of airing their rhymes. The success of the
enterprise need not be doubted. Every rhyming youth in the country
would become a subscriber-and the number of these is legion.
Buckle tells us that in Germany learned writers have no general public-they simply address each other; our poets may console themselves that, in their case, to address each other is to reach pretty
ne.rly the entire body of book-readers.
Mr. A. Boyd Hloughton, an English draughtsman of reputation, is now in this country, taking notes and making drawings of
seenes, people, and places, for publication in the new London illustrated journal, The G(raphic. A few of our contemporaries have denounced Mr. Houghton's drawings as caricatures, and as being, so far
as they have appeared, no more justly representative of our people
than Mr. Trollope's or Mr. Diekens's extravagant satires. Mr. Houghton's drawings have been really too meaningless and harmless for this
indignation. As a rule, they have been notable principally for an al
most entire absence of any thing characteristically American, and might
almost as well have been entitled "Graphic England" as " Graphic
America." The picture of the Broadway policeman was recognizable
through all its extravagance, much as the picked and stalwart mem bers of the Broadway squad may resent the artist's inability to appre ciate their tall figures and fine uniforms; and the interior of a New York barber-shop was both faithful and amusing. But the "New York Ladies and their Veils" was absurd, and represented nothing
characteristic of our streets. The " Visiting Prisoners in the Tombs"
might serve for the interior of any prison in Christendom; and the
"Ladies' Window at the New-York Post-Office "is utterly without point,
either national or otherwise. Where Mr. Houghton finds women
promenading in long trails, perhaps he can explain, but we, at least,
never discover them. "Trotting on Eighth Avenue" is unmistakably
American in general features, but there are errors of fact and errors
in drawing. The "sulky" does not accurately represent the vehicle
of that name, and, in the buggy, the driver is placed on the left side,
according to the English fashion, instead of on the right, according to
ours. Mr. Houghton's errors of commission, however, are minor ones.
What seems surprising is his failure to seize upon the real character.
istics of our city. No one, from the drawings that have so far ap peared, would be likely to get any very definite idea of our streets, or
of. the manners of our people. We should not object to a little good natured satire at Mr. Houghton's hands, if he will only perform his
promise, and give us "Graphic America" in fact, and not let his pen cil exhaust itself in characterless sketches.
- We printed a few weeks ago a communication fiom a corre spondent, suggesting a limitation of the suffrage to the head of the
family, whether man or woman; and now, to show that, if in a multi tude of counsellors there may not always be wisdom, there is pretty
sure to be variety of opinion, we offer to our readers the suggestion of
another correspondent, that the suffrage should be placed in the
hands of women only! But our correspondent would not deprive men
of all political rights and privileges. He would make men rulers, as
now, but have them elected by women. "Rulers," says this philoso pher, "should not be self-elected. What would be thought of a com munity that allowed its legislators to elect themselves to office?" Our
correspondent complains that men have gone on electing themselves
to office, sharing among each other the spoils, utterly regardless of
the rights of the other sex; and now, in order to restore a perfect equi librium in society, giving to each branch of the human family its
proper share of the duties and privileges of government, he would
have nmen administer the law, and women act as the electors. In
social society, he tells us, the head of the family is elected by the
female. Man cannot become lord of the house until he woos and wins
the suffrage of the woman; and from this precedent he derives his ar gument for such a change in our political methods that will give us
"men to rule and women to elect." He thinks this could easily be
accomplished by a constitutional amendment prefixing two letters of
the alphabet in connection with and before the word male, wherever it
occurs in connection with the franchise; and as a consequence he is
convinced that "America then would be unique. Her standard of
severeignty would be higher than that of any other nation, and her
progress in civilization beyond our present conception."
- "What to have for dinner" is often a social question of
grave and most distracting importance. It is the great perplexity of
the household, and, according to a contemporary, the cause of one of
the greatest "wrongs" women have to endure. Every woman is ~under
the necessity of knowing every meal what is on the table before she
comes to it, and this is something men would find intolerable. Neither
breakfast nor dinner, it is said, can ever come to a housekeeper as a
pleasant novelty; but, before we bewail this hard necessity, let us ask
whether the pleasure of anticipation is not as great as the pleasure of
surprise? And then a genuine surprise is the rarest of things, while
anticipation may enter into our daily experience. If "what to have
for dinner" is such a perplexity, the more opportunity is thereby af forded for judgment, taste, and invention; and, whenever the man
proves to be charmed with a surprise, then the woman is delighted with
a triumph. There is, moreover, a pleasure in selection, in arrange ment, and in the display of skill necessary to prepare a favorite dish
which the woman enjoys as peculiarly her own. How utterly feeble
is the pleasure of a man who looks upon a picture, compared to the
I deligl-t of the man who wrought it! If the beauty of a poem is
1870.]
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637