Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1875 — MISAPPLIED PROVERBS. [ARTICLE]

MISAPPLIED PROVERBS.

All utterances are to be' interpreted by their evident intention. And this is as true of proverbs as of other forms of speech. Yet, of these last, there are many perversions, some noticeable only tor their drollery, others regrettable on account of their mischievous tendency. An Irishman once backed his application for help a second time by the logical plea that one good turn deserves another; aad a countrywoman who recently came to town to purchase a flitch of bacon said to' a clergyman w T ith such an air of sanctimonious drollery as to leave her auditors in doubt whether she were more in jest than earnest, “ The Bible says, ‘ Man shall not live by bread alone,’ so I thought I would come in and buy a little meat.” Were all misapplications of proverbs as harmless as these, we might pass them by with a srpile. But some are of a very grave character, become the parents of very grave-looking offspring, and sometimes demand an equally grave consideration. To most people proverbs are like coin from the mint; they bear the stamp of authority, and pass from hand to hand with scarcely a question raised as to their genuineness or their value. They are reverently received into ordinary parlance as the condensed wisdom of ages and the verdicts of lioary-headed experiences; and, when once received, they govern with an authority like that of Holy Writ. . Who has not heard and, perhaps, been misled by the oft-repeated proverb, “ Feed a cold and starve a fever,” interpreted to mean that fevers and colds are to receive opposite modes of treatment—“stuffing” and “ starving.” Whereas its author, who endeavored to crowd words of wisdom into too narrow a space, no doubt knew and supposed that everybody else would know that a cold is only a fever under a disguised form, and therefore—as in the proverb “ Marry in haste and repent at leisure”—he intended to be understood as saying, “ If you feed a cold you will have a fever to starve.” Charity covers a .multitude of sins. — Gould the several authors of this charming proverb arise from the dead and learn the interpretation which has been given it, their holy horror would probably express itself in a dramatic scene worth witnessing. Solomon, never, probably, a man of high spirituality, notwithstanding his world-famed wisdom (that is, his common 8 sense), began its history by writing, in Proverbs x., 12: “ Hatred stirreth up strifes; but love coveretli all sins." The Septaugint translators gave a free and unauthorized form to the last clause, which made it say: “ But friendship shall cover all that are not contentious.” The Apostle Peter, in quoting Solomon, rejects the Septaugint and draws upon the original Hebrew, which he interprets: “ Charity” (that is love) “ shall cover the multitude of sins”; and the Apostle James, quoting substantially in the same way, gives us the words, “shall hide a multitude of sins.” In all these cases the writers evidently intended to say, in their flowing, Oriental style, what the Greeks and Romans embodied in the pithy maxim, “Love is blind,”. As to the natpre of its misapplication, no one need be informed. The eftort to wrest the teaching of Solomon, James and Peter to support the doctrine that almsgiving to the poor'will atone for sin is so “thin” as to remind one of the turn given to the saying, “ Cleanliness is next to godliness,” by a man noted for dissolute habits and personal purity, who used to quote it as saying, “Cleanliness is godliness.” The tongue is an unruly member, untamed and untamable.— Few proverbs of caustic character hre more universally attested than this, and, strange to say, attested most readily by those who are most obnoxious to its indictments. No doubt this is the effect in some cases ot ingenious self-re-proach ; in others, probably, it is the effort to devise an excuse for language that is otherwise inexcusable. Viewed as a piece of animal mechanism the tongue is marked with wonderful flexibility and adaptedness to vocal purposes. As to its training, it is of all the members of the human body, not excepting either hand or eye, the most perfectly ruled. In producing those articulate sounds by which thought is conveyed and those modulations of voice which express the tone and spirit of that thought, it perfectly obeys every monition of the will. The tongue is, in fact; an excellent member—the best, perhaps, in this body—if only the heart be so. It is an ‘ ‘ unruly member” only by being too faithful a servant of the power that wields it. The world owes me a living. —By whom is this claiip put in ? If by one who has long and unselfishly labored for the goed of the world at large, to the neglect of private interests, as did the apostles of our Lord, and as has done many a JohnHoward and Florence Nightingale since

their day, and even an occasional Socrates among the heathen, the claim will he good, morally, if not legally. But such are the last persons whom we expect to urge it. They usually prefer to go on silently in their work of noble "disinterestedness, and to say—if they say anything—“ The Lord will provide.” A claim of incomparably more manliness and truth was once expressed by a horribly-maimed soldier, who said, with bright and hopeful air: “ I know that the world has some useful place for me to fill, and work for me ,to do; my business is to hunt it up.” Knowledge is power. —This proverb is in two respects like Franklin’s “Honesty is the" best policy”—first, in probably being sound by original intention, and secondly in probably being the parent of more evil than good. Franklin’s, after the reign of a century, has beeri condemned by high ethical authority, and is rapidly passing out of use, because it seems to base honesty on policy , instead of regarding it as morally obligatory, and thus lowering the standard of public morals. The proverb at the head of this paragraph has also been condemned, and is also passing out of use, because its tendency has been to lower the standard of popular education. There can be no question but thjit those peoples and generations which have excelled in knowledge have also excelled in power; but any educator of youth who should act upon the principle that education consists in cramming the mind with knowledge will have perpetrated as great an eiTor as would a body of civil engineers who should saturate the atmosphere with vapor from boiling caldrons because it is known that steam is a motor. are powers (or rather menus of power) onfy when properly used. Many a man who has been known as a walking encyclopedia has been equally noted for inability to put his knowledge to account, because the practical part of his education had been neglected. . . . Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of sense If there be any misapplication predicable of these words it is rather in the reason given by the author than in the use made by those who quote them. In any case the last line is true; but in offenses against society no excuse on behalf of the offender is regarded as more available than to say he knew no better. Even the Apostle Paul affirmed, in a certain sense, its validity when, in speaking of his blasphemy against Christ, and his persecution of the church before he became a believer, he said: “ But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.” The plea, however, to be urged by permission of the offender requires such a degree of humility, or rather of self-abnegation, as to be seldom heard; for, as another old proverb says: “Most people would rather be accounted knaves than fools.” Possibly Mr. Pope had this fact in mind when penning these lines; but if he had he would have been nearer the truth, and not a whit the less biting, if he had said, substantially, in his smooth verse:

Immodes t words admit but one defense: That want of decency is want of sense; and perhaps this is' what he intended. What everybody says must be true. — There are certain deep and resistless intuitions possessing the universal mind—such as belief in the existence of a God and in the immortality of the soul—which might be safely received as true, even if they had no other support than their evident adaptedness to the necessities of our being, and the fact that they impress all unbiased minds alike, thus beautifully illustrating the sententious old maxim of the Romans: Vox populi vox Dei. These intuitions are always strongly marked with the peculiarity that, although they may not need the support of argument, they are not opposed to reason. There are cases, however, in which the vox populi has been in direct opposition to die vox Dei, as afterward revealed by reason, though none of these cases are of a moral nature, nor is their accompanying perception worthy the name of intuition. A few generations back, under the guidance of another old proverb that seeing is believing, “ everybody said” that the world was flat, and that it was a sort of immovable center around which daily revolved the sun, moon and stars. But when this “voice of the people” came to be tested by facts, which reason proclaimed to be utterances of God in nature, it vvas found to be utterly false, being an illusion of the senses; the earth is not flat, nor do any of the heavenly bodies daily rotate around it. Then, again, that mysterious and allprevailing authority known as “everybody” is proved in many cases to be a mere myth, being composed oftentimes of one’s own party in politics or clique in society, while their maxims are contradicted by people of other parties and of other cliques.— F. R. Ooulding, in Appletons' Journal.

—Kite-flying has been quite an epidemic of late at Soutlibridge, Mass. Not long since the boys in the “ spec-shop” raised a monster fourteen feet long, which required several men to manage. A man of large proportions and heavy weight ottered to bet “ that he could hold him.” The bet was quickly taken, and the tobconfident individual tied the cord around his waist and grasped it with his hands; but no sooner had he said “ Letgo” than he went over walls and gardens, and was glad enough, after yelling like mad, to be rescued from his perilous position. —There is a man in Boston, and he is Prof. Wise. This same Wise man has arranged to leave this world next winter by agreeing to lecture, and “on the same or next day make an ascension on private grounds, to which only the ticket-holders will be admitted. When one mile above the earth he will perform his daring and perilous exploit of exploding his balloon—a feat that has been done twice only since balloons were invented,” —At the banquet of the veterans of the Mexican war, in Ban Francisco, one of Jhe speakers said that Gen. Taylor did not say, “A little more grape, Capt. Bragg,” but “ Capt. Bragg, it is better to lose a battery than a battle.” This was in reply when Gen. Bragg dashed hurriedly up, saluted the General, and reported: £ General, I shall have to fall back with my battery or lose it."