A Man May Esteem
Himself Happy When That Which Is His Food Is Also His Medicine.
There Is No Kind Of Herb, But Somebody Or Other Says That It Is
Good.
I am very glad to hear it.
It reminds me of the first
chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good?
That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed;
it is incredible that they should have found it out. Since all
things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the
bane, and which the antidote. There are sure to be two
prescriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a
cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always in
full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if
there was no other. In respect to religion and the healing art,
all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most
civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the
physician a Great Medicine. Consider the deference which is
everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion. Nothing more strikingly
betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a
thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it
becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the
credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never look one
another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there
any to mediate between them. When the one comes, the other goes.
They could not come together without laughter, or a significant
silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and
either's success would be the other's failure. It is wonderful
that the physician should ever die, and that the priest should
ever live. Why is it that the priest is never called to consult
with the physician? Is it because men believe practically that
matter is independent of spirit. But what is quackery? It is
commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing
his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister
to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls
between two souls.
After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves through
the canal here, about half a mile in length, to the boatable part
of the river. Above Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake
reaching a mile or two without a bend. There were many
canal-boats here bound up to Hooksett, about eight miles, and as
they were going up empty with a fair wind, one boatman offered to
take us in tow if we would wait. But when we came alongside, we
found that they meant to take us on board, since otherwise we
should clog their motions too much; but as our boat was too heavy
to be lifted aboard, we pursued our way up the stream, as before,
while the boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor at
length under some alders on the opposite shore, where we could
take our lunch. Though far on one side, every sound was wafted
over to us from the opposite bank, and from the harbor of the
canal, and we could see everything that passed. By and by came
several canal-boats, at intervals of a quarter of a mile,
standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, and one by one
disappeared round a point above. With their broad sails set,
they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful
breeze, like one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by
some mysterious counter-current. It was a grand motion, so slow
and stately, this "standing out," as the phrase is, expressing
the gradual and steady progress of a vessel, as if it were by
mere rectitude and disposition, without shuffling. Their sails,
which stood so still, were like chips cast into the current of
the air to show which way it set. At length the boat which we
had spoken came along, keeping the middle of the stream, and when
within speaking distance the steersman called out ironically to
say, that if we would come alongside now he would take us in tow;
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the shade till we
had finished our lunch, and when the last boat had disappeared
round the point with flapping sail, for the breeze had now sunk
to a zephyr, with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot
rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided close
alongside, while they were vainly invoking Aeolus to their aid,
we returned their compliment by proposing, if they would throw us
a rope, to "take them in tow," to which these Merrimack sailors
had no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually overtook and
passed each boat in succession until we had the river to
ourselves again.
Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.
- - - - - - -
While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose
banks our Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the
stars, come out of their horizon still; for there circulates a
finer blood than Lavoisier has discovered the laws of, - the
blood, not of kindred merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still
beats at any distance and forever.
True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
Not founded upon human consanguinity.
It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
Superior to family and station.
After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or
unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more
emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made
aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been
times when our Friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty
a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven
unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what
we aspired to be.
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