Sacramento daily record-union., 1881-06-20
MEN WHO WHISTLE.

OF men who whistle, few proceed to ex.
tremities of tune. 1t can hardly be said
that they whistle for want of thought,
because no habitual whistler wants to
think Whistling, with the plurality OF
whistlers, merely serves as signal which
calls attention to their existence, fact
otherwise at some risk of being overlooked.
It is an effect of automatic instinct rather
than of conscious intention and its mo-
tive might be shared by the lower animals,
If the lower animals ever suffered from un-
easy elfesteem, complicated with sort
who not only do not whistle "at their own
sweet will, but who do evidently whistle
against it. If they could rid themselves
of the feeling which prompts whistling
they would much rather not whistle. If
sheep could refrain from baaing, in cir
cumstances whioh render it undesirable, in
his own interest, that he should baa, he
would not baa. Ii whistler could refrain
from whistling when by whlstling he makes
himself feel as painfully foolish as man
in the act of whistling always looks, he
would not whistle.
Whistling is intensely and peculiarly
English, and it has hourished very much
of late years; which fact looks little
awkward for the intellectual character, as
well as personal manners, of the nation.
Let any elderly person of good observation
and memory try to think what would have
been the effect upon room full of people
in his salad days, had steady, continuous
whistle been set up by any one in com.
pany. There were no railway carriages for
people to whistle in; /; but fancy if any pas
senger in a stage-coach had ventured to
whistle We all know that habit spreads
very quickly, and that the habits of indi-
viduals become the habits OF classes and in
time the habits of nations. There is just
the connection between an individual
and his country, through the classes
with whom he is most familiar,
that there is between the senti-
ment of egotism and the sentiment of
patriotism, through the middle sentiment
of parochiality. This particular habit of
whistling, therefore, may have spread from
potboy to a people, passing through
many steps of class contagion by the way.
But no growth-of habit or anything else
can go on without conditions favorable
to life. The germ would starve if all around
1t were sterile There must be some con.
genial receptiveness in the man or boy who
catches up trick and keeps it alive and
going Unconscious imitation is only
step, and if not followed up by other steps
it will lead nowhere and end in nothing.
Let us ask, then, what is the mental
ground-what the nature of the man in
whom this habit OF whisthng is taken
up as seed and nouIished into
rank and rapid growth. Well, you
Will find as a rule, though of course not
invariably, that he is suspicious of obser-
walton, and yet somewhat desirous of being |
recognized. Probably he would not whistle |
If be were alone. Ii you enter the coffee |
room of club or hotel, and find him sit
ting there with nobody else, you do not
find him whistling; but he viii whistle |
before you have been two minutes in the |
room. And if, on the other hand, you are
Grst there and he is the next conner, he
will give a glance around, and seeing
somebody with whom he is not well ac.
Guainted, will assume an elaborate air Of
seeing nobody, will take up book and
throw it down again, look out of the
window or in the glass, ring for brandy and
soda-water - the want of something to
drink being merely the want Of something
30 do-and whistle till it comes.
Few Frenchmen whistle, and Italians
never. The French, indeed, have a PROV
erb on the subject which is not compli-
mentary to their lively neighbors, our
selves. When Germans whistle, and it is
not often they do, it is with melody pre-
pense. They cultivate odd gifts of amuse-
ment, those convivial Teutons, and whis-
ting is sometimes praeticed among them
as an accomplishment. But it is precisely
x.ri,sk1a,s H..
he keeps his endowment for service when
called upon, and seldom whistles in public,
or without being asked. The Englishman
who cannot whistle does. Do we not all
know the stolid fat man of few words,
but OF one unceasing sound, who is so
entirely the creature of habit that he
takes up the same position at regular peri
DDS, and If he cannot get his accustomed
chair pines nervously in another? But, in
his place or out OF it, be whistles softly
and oleasinously, as if he would never grow
thin. His whistle is not the thin piping of
the plebeian youth, who suffers not the
drowsy air to slumber, nor the sharp
winter wind to thrill him into silence. 1t
is fat, round, soft, hard-breathing whis-
tie, as Of an elderly grampus overcome by
heat. Then there is the restless man who
whistles, and who, so tar from gravitating
to one loved spot, never sits five minutes in
any. His whistle is the most irritating of
all for he seems to be perpetually suffer
ing from a bad tune in the head, which he
is vainly trying to whistle away. He is
the unconscious object of many nicknames,
bearing, some directly ard Others with in-
genious remoteness, on his constitutional
siffiancy. Picco. Driver, Petrcl, Decoy,
Joel, Oysters, R:quet, Roarer are some OF
the obvious and eniematic pseudonyms with
which he is affsctionally endowed by his
The restless whistler is great
at the devils tattoo. He beats that internal
rappel with his finger-nails on the table, on
the crown of his hat on anything respons-
i've to the diabohcal drumming. A knife
or poker viii serve him in keeping up a
steady tap-tap-tap for as bad quarter of
an hour as ever was chimed on a cracked
bell. Ii chance should move him to put
his hand in his pocket tits dead certainty
that be viii whistle. For he is the bird OF
i'll note; the prophet of disturbance in the
moral atmosphere the Mother Carey's
chick of the vexed life-sea. = -[London
World.
HAMMERS CAscARA SAsRApA BrTTEas produces
II he k,st ~