Polynesian., 1858-08-14
Gbe ]Dolpnesian.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast.Table.

| -Uur brains are seventy-yea clocks. The
Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then
closes the case, and gives the key into the hand
of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac tc-tac go the wheels of thought our
will cannot stop them; they cannot stop them
selves; sleep cannot still them; madness only
makes them 90 faster; death alone can break into
the case, and, seizing the ever-swnging pendu-
lum, which we call the heart silence at last the
clinking of the terrible escapement we have car
red so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
five could only get at them, we lie on our
pillows and count the dead beats of thought after
thought and image after image jarring through
the overtired organ! Will nobody block those
wheels uncOuple that pinion, cut the string that
holds those weights, blow up the internal machine
with gunpowder? What passion comes over
sometimes for silence and rest.-that this dread
full mechanism, unwlnding the endless tapestry of
time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and
DEATH could have but one brief holiday! Who
can wonder that men swing themselves off from
beams in hempen lassos THAT they jump off
from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters
beneath THAT they take counsel of the grim
friend who has but to utter his one percmptory
monosyable and the restless machine is shivered
a that is dashed upon a marble floor?
Under that building which pass every day
| there are strong dungeons, where neither hook,
nor bar, nor bedcord, nor drinking-vessel from
WHICH SldTp fragment may Oe SHdlleGeus ny
any chance be seen. There is nothing for it,
when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its
wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and
silence them with one crash. Ah, they remem-
bered that,-the kind city fathers.-and the walls
are nicely padded, so that one take such exer-
else as he likes without damagin himself on the
very plain and servicable upholstery. II anybody
would only contrVe some kind of a lever that one
could thrust in among the works OF this horrid au-
nd RI nj rat
ing, what would the world give for the discovery?
From half dime to a dime, according to
the style of the place and the quality of the liquor,
said the young fellow whom they call John.
You speak trivialIy, but not unwisely,-I said.
Unless the will maintain certain control over
these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to
some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to
get at the machine by some indirect system of le-
yerage or other. They clap on the breaks by means
of opium they change the maddenlng mon0tOny
of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. II
is because the brain is locked up and we cannot
touch its movement directly, that we thrust these
coarse tools in through any crevice by which they
may reach the interior, and so alter Its rate OF 60
ing for while, and at last spoil the machine.
Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the
mind which work independent of the will,-poetS
and artists for instance, who follow their Imagi-
nation in their creative moments, instead OF keep
ing it in hand as your logcIans and practical men
do with their reasoning facuty,-such men are
too apt to call in the mechanical appliances to
help them govern their intellects.
He means they get drunk, said the young
fellow already alluded to by name.
Do you think men of true genius are apt TO
indulge in the of inebriating aads :-said the
divinity student.
If you think you are strong enough to bear what
am going to say,-I repied.-l will talk to you
about this But mind, now, these are the things
that some foolish people call dangerous subjects,
as if these vices which burrow into peoples
souls, as the Guinea-worm burrows into the naked
feet of West-Indian slaves, would be more mis-
chievous when seen than out of sight. Now the
true way to deal with those obstinate animals,
which are dozen feet long, some OF them, and no
bigger than horse-hair, is to get piece OF silk
round their heads, and pull them out very eau
tousy. If you only break them of, they grow
worse than ever and sometimes xii. the person
that has the misfortune of harborlng one of them.
Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is TO
find out where the head lies
Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this
vice of ntemperance. What is the head of It,
and where does it lie? For you may depend upon
it, there is not one OF these vices that has not
head of its own,-an inteigence,-a meaning
a certain virtue, | was going to say,-but that
might, perhaps, sound paradoxical have heard
an immense number of moral physicians lay down
the treatment of moral Gunea-worms, and the
vast majority of them would always insist that the
creature had no head at all, but was all body and
tail So have found a very common result of
their method to be that the string slipped, or thot
a piece only of the creature was broken OH, and
the worm soon grew again, as bSd as ever. The
truth is, if the Devil could only appear IN church
by attorney, and make the best statement that the
facts would bear him out in doing on behalf Of his
special virtues, (what commonly call vIces,)
the influence of good teachers would be much great
er than it is For the arguments by which the
Devil prevails are precisely the ones that the Dew
il-Queller most rarely answers. The way to argue
down vice is not to tell lies about ito say
that il has no attractions, when every body knows
that it has,-but rather to let make out its case
Just as it certainly will in the moment of tempta-
tion and then meet it with the weapons furnished
by the Divine armory. IIhuriel did not spit the
toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him
with it, and the blasted angel took the said glo-
ries of his true shape. If he had shown fight then
the fair spirits would have known how to deal with
him.
That all spasmodc cerebral action is an evil is
not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated
with music, with poetry, with religious excitement,
-oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said she
was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her,
and convaescents have been made tpSy by beef
steak.
There are forms and stages of alcoholic exalta-
ton, which, in themselves, and without regard to
their consequences, might be considered as posi-
tive improvements of the persons affected. When
the sluggish intellect is reused, the slow speech
quickened, the cold nature warmed, the latent
sympathy developed, the tagging spirit kndled,
before the trains of thought became confused. or
the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed,-jus
at the moment when the whole human 70 ophyte
flowers uut like full-blnwn rose. and is ripe for
the subscription or the contrbution-box,-it
would be hard 10 say that man was, at that very
time, worse or less to be loved, than when driving
hard bargain with all bis meaner wits about him.