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THE Persian, Abou ben Adhem, was in a deep
study one morning, when a person — a male
person — from the village in the neighborhood came
to him for the purpose of conversation.

“What wouldst thou?” was Abou's remark.

“I would learn something!” was the reply.

“That is to say, you would drop the bucket of
your ignorance into the well of my wisdom. Well,
be chesm, drop away! what wouldst thou now?”

“Great Abou, is there any way by which we degenerate
sons of noble sires can get back to the good
old habits, manners, and customs of our forefathers?
Can we restore the simple habits of the olden time, —
the good old time?”

“What?”

“Can we not go back a few hundred years, and — ”

“Ass!” was Abou's reply. “Oh, what a fate is
mine! Such men as you come to me, and, as there
is a punishment for killing, I am compelled to convert.
Well, I submit.

“You sigh for the good old times, do you? Do

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you know what those good old times were? Of
course you do not. Such men as you never do!
You have an idea in your wooden heads that men
were simple, honest beings, who went about in doublets,
knee-breeches, and hose, with silver buckles on
their shoes; and that women were ditto, — all but the
breeches and doublets. You have got the notion
that as the world grows older wickedness increases,
and that all humanity is tending to a ghastly hell.
But I, who lived during those times, know better.

“O imbecile! O ignoramus! O unphilosophical
reader of bad poetry! Don't you know that
human nature was precisely the same five hundred
years ago that it is now; that humanity perpetually
yearns for something better and higher and nobler,
and that precisely as knowledge increases so does
goodness? You want to go back to the good old
times, do you? What good old times? To the
good old times of Moses and Joshua, who had a habit
when they made war of slaughtering all the men,
women, and children that fell into their hands? No,
they reserved the women; but it was no compliment
to the morals of those people that they omitted that
much of bloodshed. Do you want to go back to the
good old times of the old French kings, — say Francis
and the earlier Louises, — when the people were
slaves, permitted black bread only, and not half
enough of that, and the nobles were tyrants, wielding
supreme power, and robed in velvets and silks?
Have you a fancy for the good old times in Germany,
when the barons, when they came in from hunting,

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had a cheerful habit of having a peasant killed and
his bowels taken out that they might warm their feet
in the cavity? Or do you prefer the good old times
in England, when king and court were so shamelessly
dissolute that no pretence of virtue was made, when
chastity was a scoff and concealment of sin a joke,
when London was ruled by common stabbers, when
might was right, and safety was only found in cunning
or strength? How would you like to trade
your steamships for the old high-pooped sail-vessels,
the railroad for the cumbrous wagon, the macadamized
road for the mud, the cooking-range for the barbarous
fire, our cuisine for their fearful cookery, Croton
water for miserable wells, gas for torches of lightwood,
safety for danger, comfort for non-comfort, —
civilization for barbarism, in short?

“There was n't any such thing as humanity in those
days, either in theory or practice. If a man got
tired of his wife, he simply dissolved the matrimonial
tie by cutting her throat; if a woman got tired of her
husband, she hinted to her paramour the fact that Sir
Henry was a tiresome old muff, and immediately Sir
Henry had a rapier run through him.

“How vast the improvement of these later days!
Now the party disgusted simply goes to Indiana or
Chicago, and, in a perfectly legal manner, the judge
dissolves the connection, and the party returns and
marries the new object of his or her choice, and
everything is as serene as the face of a mill-pond.

“In the good old times of which you are so enamoured,
if a man got embarrassed pecuniarily, he

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mounted his horse and loaded his pistol, — they
did n't have beautiful revolvers then, — and putting
an ugly black mask over his face rode out on the
highway, and stopped the lumbering old coach, and
took purses at the muzzle of the pistol.

“Now how does such an individual do? Why, he
gets a contract from the Government, he starts a life
insurance company, or, if he is a great genius, a
genuine descendant of Dick Turpin or Jack Sheppard,
he gets into Congress, and votes as his conscience and
interest dictates, or he gets hold of the Erie Railroad,
or — but why enumerate? You see the difference,
and how much to-day is better than the days three
hundred years ago.

“To bring it down a little later, how would you
like to go back to the days of the Puritan Fathers,
those estimable old Liberals, who fled from England
because they were not there permitted to worship
according to their notions, and who immediately set
up just as intolerant a system in the land to which
they fled? It was all well enough for the Puritans;
but how was it with the Quakers, whom they exiled,
after making them harmless in disputations by boring
their heretical tongues with orthodox hot irons?

“Or to go a little farther back, how would you
like to have the personal combat business restored?
That was a delightful practice, was n't it? A big
burly ruffian claimed your farm or abducted your
daughter; then the burly ruffian swore he was innocent,
and demanded the trial by combat. He was
used to weapons, and his fighting weight was a

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hundred and eighty-five: you never knew which end of
a sword to take hold of, and weighed one hundred
and twenty-five. But you had to do it. The first
round, down you went, and the judges declared him
innocent, and you guilty of bringing false accusations.
He kept the girl, and your head was chopped off, and
your property confiscated to the State. In those
good old days, the State meant the king and his pet
mistress. It is true there was a superstition that
Providence would protect the right; but, as a rule,
the burly ruffian in the wrong made short work of
the small man in the right.

“The thumb-screw, the rack, the stake, and all
that cheerful paraphernalia belonged to and was the
exclusive property of the good old times,— the good
old times that exiled the bold men who insisted that
the world was round and not flat, with other heresies.
Do you want them back again? You point at municipal
and governmental corruption. I grant it bad
enough; but bad as it is, it is better to have polite
thieves than brutal ones; and it is a high compliment
to the times that the people are in possession of
property to be taxed. In your good old times
the State and Church took it all as fast as it was
earned.

“It took the world thousands of years to get to
the point of civilization that would admit of a jury
and hundreds more to reach the sublime heights of a
republic. And it has just commenced at that. Both
have yet to be perfected.

“The mistake that men of your notions make is,

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you don't seem to have any idea whatever that other
men know anything or have any sense. Because a
woman likes carpets on a floor better than rushes, is
she less virtuous? Can't a man be as good, clad in
decent broadcloth as in odorous sheep-skin? Is dirt
akin to godliness, or does filth tend to enlarge the
moral muscles? Could a man with a back-breaking
sickle sing praises to the God of Nature any more
melodiously than he can now, mounted on a comfortable
reaper? Nay, my friend, on a reaper a man
might thank Heaven he lived; with a sickle, I question
whether he would feel that thankfulness.

“The more men know, the greater the inducement
they have to virtuous life. In the barbarous age,
before law was invented, if a man wanted a piece of
land which another man claimed, the claimants met
with stone hatchets. Both kept the land, — one of
them on the surface, and the other some three feet
beneath, with a hole in his head. As civilization
progressed, the hatchet went out and law came in,
and the more civilization we have the less hatchet we
have. We have wars now, it is true; but it is because,
and only because, we are not yet fully civilized.
We have thieves and robbers now; but it is because
there lurks yet in the human system a taint of the good
old times. Civilization has not yet fully physicked
humanity, and traces of barbarism remain. Napoleon
was a varnished barbarian; Kaiser Wilhelm is an
Attilla with veneering on. Then down in Delaware
the whipping-post is a mile-stone in the path of the
progress of the other States, useful merely to make

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the better people of other localities congratulate
themselves on what they have surmounted.

“`Good old times,' forsooth! Go to, wretched
man! To-day is the best day the world ever saw;
to-morrow will be better, and its to-morrow better
still. In five or ten thousand years, this world will
be a tolerably decent place to live in. Do you know
why men exposed their lives so recklessly in battle
in your `good old times'? Bravery! you say. Bosh!
It was because there was nothing under heaven to
live for; precisely as I, feeling that I must die some
time, came to New Jersey, that I might leave this
world without a pang of regret. It was a cowardly
willingness to get out of the world, because there
could be nothing worse.

“But leave me now. Instead of mourning for a
miserable past, tackle the splendid present, and try
to do something for a still more splendid future. Do
something for the world you live in. Do something
for the race you belong to. After hearing you talk,
I might properly suggest that the best thing you
could do for humanity would be to drown yourself;
but I forbear. I am not in a sarcastic mood this
morning. Go to! I am weary; leave me.”

And the Sage went into his tent, and was soon in
the arms of Morpheus.

p632-151

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