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Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd. The Recreations of a Country Parson
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE
CHAPTER II. CONCERNING DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS. CHAPTER III. CONCERNING SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. CHAPTER IV. CONCERNING CHURCHYARDS. CHAPTER V. CONCERNING SUMMER DAYS. CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING SCREWS. CHAPTER VII. CONCERNING SOLITARY DAYS. CHAPTER VIII. CONCERNING GLASGOW DOWN THE WATER. CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING MAN AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE. CHAPTER X. LIFE AT THE WATER-CURE. CHAPTER XI. CONCERNING FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. CHAPTER XII. CONCERNING THE PULPIT IN SCOTLAND. CHAPTER XIII. CONCERNING FUTURE TEARS. CHAPTER XIV. CONCLUSION. CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE PARSON'S CHOICE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY
CHAPTER II
CONCERNING DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS; SOME THOUGHTS UPON THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM
CHAPTER IV
CONCERNING CHURCHYARDS
A. BC D. E. F. G.!
CHAPTER V
CONCERNING SUMMER DAYS
CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING SCREWS: BEING THOUGHTS ON THE PRACTICAL SERVICE OF IMPERFECT MEANS. A CONSOLATORY ESSAY
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING SOLITARY DAYS
CHAPTER VIII
CONCERNING GLASGOW DOWN THE WATER
CHAPTER IX
CONCERNING MAN AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE
CHAPTER X
LIFE AT THE WATER CURE
CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING FRIENDS IN COUNCIL
CHAPTER XII
CONCERNING THE PULPIT IN SCOTLAND
CHAPTER XIII
CONCERNING FUTURE YEARS
CONCLUSION
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Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Disappointment, I have said, is almost sure to be experienced in a greater or less degree, so long as anything remains to be wished or sought. And a provision is made for the indefinite continuance of disappointment in the lot of even the most successful of men, by the fact in rerum naturu that whenever the wants felt on a lower level are supplied, you advance to a higher platform, where a new crop of wants is felt. Till the lower wants are supplied you never feel the higher; and accordingly people who pass through life barely succeeding in gaining the supply of the lower wants, will hardly be got to believe that the higher wants are ever really felt at all. A man who is labouring anxiously to earn food and shelter for his children—who has no farther worldly end, and who thinks he would be perfectly happy if he could only be assured on New Year's day that he would never fail in earning these until the thirty-first of December, will hardly believe you when you tell him that the Marquis at the castle is now utterly miserable because the King would not give him a couple of yards of blue or green ribbon. And it is curious in how many cases worldly-successful men mount, step after step, into a new series of wants, implying a new set of mortifications and disappointments. A person begins as a small tradesman; all he aims at is a maintenance for him and his. That is his first aim. Say he succeeds in reaching it. A little ago he thought he would have been quite content could he only do that. But from his new level he sees afar a new peak to climb; now he aims at a fortune. That is his next aim. Say he reaches it. Now he buys an estate; now he aims at being received and admitted as a country gentleman; and the remainder of his life is given to striving for social recognition in the county. How he schemes to get the baronet to dine with him, and the baronet's lady to call upon his homely spouse! And every one has remarked with amusement the hive of petty mortifications, failures, and disappointments, through which he fights his way, till, as it may chance, he actually gains a dubious footing in the society he seeks, or gives up the endeavour as a final failure. Who shall say that any one of the successive wants the man has felt is more fanciful, less real, than any other? To Mr. Oddbody, living in his fine house, it is just as serious an aim to get asked to the Duke's ball, as in former days it was to Jack Oddbody to carry home on Saturday night the shillings which were to buy his bread and cheese.
And another shade of disappointment which keeps pace with all material success is that which arises, not from failing to get a thing, but from getting it and then discovering that it is not what we had fancied—that it will not make us happy. Is not this disappointment ft It everywhere? When the writer was a little boy, he was promised that on a certain birthday a donkey should be bought for his future riding. Did not he frequently allude to it in conversation with his companions? Did not he plague the servants for information as to the natural history and moral idiosyncrasy of donkeys? Did not the long-eared visage appear sometimes through his dreams? Ah, the donkey came! Then followed the days of being pitched over his head; the occasions on which the brute of impervious hide rushed through hedges and left me sticking in them: happiness was no nearer, though the donkey was there. Have you not, my philosophic friend, had your donkey? I mean your moral donkey. Yes, and scores of such. When you were a schoolboy, longing for the holidays, have you not chalked upon doors the legend—OH FOR AUGUST! Vague, delightful visions of perfect happiness were wrapped up in the words. But the holidays came, as all holidays have done and will do; and in a few days you were heartily wearied of them. When you were spoony about Marjory Anne, you thought that once your donkey came, once you were fairly married and settled, what a fine thing it would be! I do not say a syllable against that youthful matron; but I presume you have discovered that she falls short of perfection, and that wedded life has its many cares. You thought you would enjoy so much the setting-up of your carriage; your wife and you often enjoyed it by anticipation on dusty summer days: but though all very well, wood and iron and leather never made the vehicle that shall realize your anticipations. The horses were often lame; the springs would sometimes break; the paint was always getting scratched and the lining cut. Oh, what a nuisance is a carriage! You fancied you would be perfectly happy when you retired from business and settled in the country. What a comment upon such fancies is the fashion in which retired men of business haunt the places of their former toils like unquiet ghosts! How sick they get of the country! I do not think of grand disappointments of the sort; of the satiety of Vathek, turning sickly away from his earthly paradise at Cintra; nor of the graceful towers I have seen rising from a woody cliff above a summer sea, and of the story told me of their builder, who, after rearing them, lost interest in them, and in sad disappointment left them to others, and went back to the busy town wherein he had made his wealth. I think of men, more than one or two, who rented their acre of land by the sea-side, and built their pretty cottage, made their grassplots and trained their roses, and then in unaccustomed idleness grew weary of the whole and sold their place to some keen bargain-maker for a tithe of what it cost them.
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