TWO HAPPY HOURS OF SAVAGERY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3929, 19 September 1874, Page 6 (Supplement)

TWO HAPPY HOURS OF SAVAGERY.

The following is from Scribner's " Old Cabinet" :—

There are moments in the,life of every simple and discreet soul when he wants to kill his grandmother. I say grand-" mother, but merely in a generic sense. The desire is for murder ; and grandmother stands for butcher, baker, candlestick maker, the 'world, at large, or any one in particular. The desire is for something to break the monotony of this weary conventional life ; to forget broadcloth, andrernemb.er only thebrute—in a word, to smash things. When a human being puts off his round-about and puts on his coat, he becomes a, slave. In his more rational moments he may acknowledge that what he loses in freedom he gains in cnlture ; that though he cannot climb a tree or a lamp-post, he can soar into the infinities ; that if he cannot throw brickbats at windows and tie tin pans to dogs' tails, he can. at least edit a aaily nineteenth century newspaper. Still, the time will come when his boyish savagery will reassert itself, when it may be—

' If that hypothesis of theirs be sound'— a more ancient and primeval savagery wili in him wake and cry.

This human tendency, or phase of reminiscence, has various developments. The commonest is mere anger—a stupid, every-day, 'household experience, about which little need be said, and the less said the better. Then there is that mild mania—perplexing to so many of its victims—the sudden-springing desire to jump over the precipice, pitch the baby out of the windowj laugh at the funeral, or throw the hymn-book at the head of the parson. And the parson himself ; who shall say that it is not sometimes this same impulse that prompts him at times to throw fire and brimstone at the heads of the good people sitting so patiently beneath him ? I do confess I have lead, nothing lately with such keen relish as the story of the Sandwich Island mob, who, when they heard, outside of the Court House, that Kalakau was elected sovereign of the nation over their favourite, Queen Emma, set up a true Hawaiian yell, fell upon the honourable representatives, both inside and outside of the hall, put them up, so to speak, into kindling wood, and for two mortal hours raged and ramped, slashed, crashed, screamed, and roared through the buildings like so many lions and hyenas. At the end of two hours the room looked as if it had been the scene of a railroad accident.

They do that kind of thing very well in Paiis, but there they mis a little French ingenuity with the destruction, and, besides, the thing there is raisonne. There is some sense in it. The petroUuse has a

certain VBgue apprehension of Nemesis. But this Hawaiian outburst apparently began and ended in foolishness. It was not a Cause, or even a Movement. It was quelled—my friend, who was there that very day, tells me—by a big U. S. marine, who himself carried a large part of the mob to the lock-up, six at a time —three in each hand. The King was quietly installed very soon after, and the insurrectionists se3in to make as loyal subjects aa Kalakaua could wish.'

You need not tell mo that it was a grand hatred for the .new king that made them go on like wild beasts. No. They had a better provocation than that. For generation after generation they had been, to use.Mrs Muffin's expression, "sat upon" by civilized clothes, civilized customs, civilized governments, civilized law?, civilized properties, and civilization generally." The time had come when those in whom the old blood was hottest could stand it no longer. They arose, and in the names of their ancestors, smashed things. They had two happy hours. . ■ .

So, while we may have a certain sympathetic understanding of the barbaric element in. art, literature, and religion, that is very far from being able to endure it there. It is a thing which every man knows how to repress in his own bosom, and he sees no reason why the poet, for instance, should not do the same when it comes to a matter of artistic expression. If the ordinary civilised man easily conquers any possible desire to run howling and naked through the streets of the small village where he may happen to reside, why should a poet be permitted to send his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world '? ; ,

If in art, savagery is out of place, how much more in religion ? Ifc is not merely in rant that the tendency shows itself, but in that late and unlovely form of city evangelism, which has all the vulgarity of the backwoods ministry, but none of its alleviations. An ignorant, half-savage, but terribly sincere border camp-meeting preacher may season his discourse with such phrase and illustration. as are native to himself, and to Ms rough congregation. But when a preacher, out of whom much of the brute should have been eliminated by : contact with the decencies' of life, mixes the Gospel with1 garbage, and spreads the stuff before his hearers, he is a shame and a nuisance. It will not do to hush up protest by saying that he "does good "to the class to whom he appeals. He should "not approach the low on the level of their vulgarity. It is the Jesuit who does ill that good may come. Cleanliness and Christliness are one. Bad taste is bad Inorals the world over.