Studies in Classic American Literature. D. H. Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ TEMPERANCE

      Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.

      2. SILENCE

      Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

      3. ORDER

      Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

      4. RESOLUTION

      Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

      5. FRUGALITY

      Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself i.e., waste nothing.

      6. INDUSTRY

      Lose no time, be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary action.

      7. SINCERITY

      Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

      8. JUSTICE

      Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

      9. MODERATION

      Avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries as much as you think they deserve.

      10. CLEANLINESS

      Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

      11. TRANQUILLITY

      Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

      12. CHASTITY

      Rarely use venery but for health and offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

      13. HUMILITY

      Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

      A Quaker friend told Franklin that he, Benjamin, was generally considered proud, so Benjamin put in the Humility touch as an afterthought. The amusing part is the sort of humility it displays. 'Imitate Jesus and Socrates,' and mind you don't outshine either of these two. One can just imagine Socrates and Alcibiades roaring in their cups over Philadelphian Benjamin, and Jesus looking at him a little puzzled, and murmuring: 'Aren't you wise in your own conceit, Ben?'

      Henceforth be masterless,' retorts Ben. ' Be ye each one his own master unto himself, and don't let even the Lord put His spoke in.' 'Each man his own master' is but a puffing up of masterlessness.

      Well, the first of Americans practiced this enticing list with assiduity, setting a national example. He had the virtues in columns, and gave himself good and bad marks according as he thought his behaviour deserved. Pity these conduct charts are lost to us. He only remarks that Order was his stumbling block. He could not learn to be neat and tidy.

      Isn't it nice to have nothing worse to confess ?

      He was a little model, was Benjamin. Doctor Franklin. Snuff-coloured little man! Immortal soul and all!

      The immortal soul part was a sort of cheap insurance policy.

      Benjamin had no concern, really, with the immortal soul. He was too busy with social man.

      (1) He swept and lighted the streets of young Philadelphia.

      (2) He invented electrical appliances.

      (3) He was the centre of a moralizing club in Philadelphia, and he wrote the moral humorisms of Poor Richard.

      (4) He was a member of all the important councils of Philadelphia, and then of the American colonies.

      (5) He won the cause of American Independence at the French Court, and was the economic father of the United States.

      Now what more can you want of a man? And yet he is infra dig., even in Philadelphia.

      I admire him. I admire his sturdy courage first of all, then his sagacity, then his glimpsing into the thunders of electricity, then his common-sense humour. All the qualities of a great man, and never more than a great citizen. Middle-sized, sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin, one of the soundest citizens that ever trod or 'used venery'.

      I do not like him.

      And, by the way, I always thought books of Venery were about hunting deer.

      There is a certain earnest naivete‚ about him. Like a child. And like a little old man. He has again become as a little child, always as wise as his grandfather, or wiser.

      Perhaps, as I say, the most complete citizen that ever 'used venery'.

      Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn't he an archetype?

      Pioneer, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can't do with him.

      What's wrong with him then? Or what's wrong with us?

      I can remember, when I was a little boy, my father used to buy a scrubby yearly almanac with the sun and moon and stars on the cover. And it used to prophesy bloodshed and famine. But also crammed in corners it had little anecdotes and humorisms, with a moral tag. And I used to have my little priggish laugh at the woman who counted her chickens before they were hatched and so forth, and I was convinced that honesty was the best policy, also a little priggishly. The author of these bits was Poor Richard, and Poor Richard was Benjamin Franklin, writing in Philadelphia well over a hundred years before.

      And probably I haven't got over those Poor Richard tags yet. I rankle still with them. They are thorns in young flesh.

      Because, although I still believe that honesty is the best policy, I dislike policy altogether; though it is just as well not to count your chickens before they are hatched, it's still more hateful to count them with gloating when they are hatched. It has taken me many years and countless smarts to get out of that barbed wire moral enclosure that Poor Richard rigged up. Here am I now in tatters and scratched to ribbons, sitting in the middle of Benjamin's America looking at the barbed wire, and the fat sheep crawling under the fence to get fat outside, and the watch-dogs yelling at the gate lest by chance anyone should get out by the proper exit. Oh America! Oh Benjamin! And I just utter a long loud curse against Benjamin and the American corral.

      Moral America! Most moral Benjamin. Sound, satished Ben!

      He had to go to the frontiers of his State to settle some disturbance among the Indians. On this occasion he writes:

      We found that they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; they were all drunk, men and women quarrelling and fighting. Their dark-coloured bodies, half-naked, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with fire-brands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of hell that could be well imagined. There was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodging. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no notice.

      The next day, sensible they had СКАЧАТЬ