ASSES.

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 32, 23 April 1881, Page 338

ASSES.

The most famous of modern philosophers has said that the millions who inhabit Great Britain and her Colonies are mostly fools. Even if the late Mr. Carlyle's percentage be placed a little too high, fools are certainly plentiful enough in this colony. There are times, no doubt, when every man must confess that he has made an ass of himself or behaved live a fool. It is not given to all mortals to be always wise. 'If there be those whose folly has never appeared,' says La Rochefoucauld, 'it is because it has never been closely looked for.' The actions of men, according to Lord Byron, are not, in nine cases out of ten, directed by their reason, but are under the control of their passions, their prejudices, and their caprices. This is especially the case in our relations with the softer sex. Men are continually making fools of themselves about women. Wheedled by appeals to their vanity, or bewitched by the glamour of 'bright eyes, they rush into hot admiration, which may prove inconvenient, injudicious, and unwise. It is not until they have surrendered their peace of mind, perhaps suffered excruciating tortures, that they realise how passion has blinded them, and pay the penalty of reckless folly in vain regrets. Or they may be misled by prejudices, by childish stickling for forms and observances, by capricious, but exaggerated, reliance upon the judgment of others, by temporary misconceptions and misunderstandings, and commit errors which it takes years of moral sackcloth and ashes to repair. But these are occasional lapses which no one can confidently expect to escape altogether. When they overtake us we may find consolation in the proverb, that he who pretends to live without folly is not so wise as he thinks. It is far otherwise with that increasingly large class of persons in whom assishness seems imbred. When they talk they must bray. They show their long ears every time they wag their heads. The colonial ass is a prolific species, and is to be found in a rich variety of forms. The male betrays his asinine instincts in many ways peculiar to himself. Now he is a great official filling some highly-honoured post, who so far permits his constitutional want of judgment to get the better of him that he indulges in unseemly squabbles, detracting from the dignity of his ancient office and dragging it in the dust. He may be a legislator who thinks that the whole colony hangs longingly upon his heehaws, and receives them with the rapt attention Titania gave to translated Bottom. He may be a man of mark, but with a peevish irritable temper ; and it is almost a truism to assert that the man who lightly loses his temper is undoubtedly an ass ; for, by parting with his selfcontrol, he gives points to the opposite side, and plays into his adversary's hand. This one fancies every passer-by is biting at him the thumb of scorn, and rushes into litigation, with the sole object, as it seems, of courting an unpleasant expose, of washing much dirty linen, in public with which the family laundress would have far more effectively dealt ; of subjecting himself, his cherished secrets, his hidden and not always entirely irreproachable actions, bis private opinions, even his innermost thoughts, to the eager but contemptuous scrutiny of a jeering crown. The wise man, it has been well said, avoids all occasions of dispute. An ass rushes into them with the headlong rashness of an Irishman eager to tread on an enemy's coat. There are other asses, whose unquenchable craving for notoriety forces them to pose perpetually before the public, even as the heroes of not too reputable escapades. They obstinately and persistently refuse to be pacified ; if they have really the smallest claim to consider themselves injured, they will have nothing less than their pound of flesh ; if they have been themselves to blame, they will not admit their errors or accept the good offices of friends who would willingly pull them out of their scrape. Such asses are the incurables of society. We may answer them according to their folly, but we cannot alter their congenital traits. We pity a poor man, says Sydney Smith, if he be lame or blind, but never for being a fool, although it is really as great and as irreparable a misfortune as any. Asses they are, and asses they will continue to be to the end of the chapter. These Dogberrys need only the sexton to write them down. They ask us continually to remember their title ; they would remind us, like their immortal prototype, that

they be householders — rich fellows who have had losses, who know the law, have two gowns and everything handsome about them, and regret only that they had not been writ down asses, as they are. Asses they are indeed, and of the first water, but asses who deserve pity rather than scorn.

Not so those minor asses who jostle us at every corner, and proclaim their assishness in every crack-brained action and in every blatant sound. Those, for instance, who live habitually beyond their incomes, who must play for the biggest stakes in a never-ending game of social brag ; whose wives, asses also, waste their substance in gratifying a morbid taste for dress and display, and in breathless competition with neighbours, compared to whom they are what earthen pots are to brass. Women may have often a much keener sense of the ridiculous, but they frequently make asses of themselves too. Some, although arrived already at a matronly age, will jeopardise their reputations by betraying an unmistakeable preference for a much younger man ; permitting themselves to be affiched with him everywhere, and resuming the long-forgotten coquettish airs and graces of girlhood, hoping thus to prove more attractive in his eyes. Others are foolish enough to court universal homage, accepting it when rendered as the indefeasible right of their transcendant charms, and continuing wilfully blind to the fact that it may be traced to interested motives, or perhaps to gain ulterior advantages by which they will seriously suffer in the end. What is the woman who trusts to paint and patches and other patent artifices to increase her attractions or conceal the ravages of time but the incarnation of foolishness, seeing that it is she alone who is deceived ? Age never brings wisdom to the true-born ass ; but it may tone down his exuberance, and cover with a thin veneer of common sense his more prosperous ways. To see human assishness in its most perfect form we must observe it in the young. The youngjackass is nowadays a very commonly encountered specimen of his kind. We have heard a great deal of the Crutch-and-Tooth-pick brigade at Home, and they are occasionally en evidence out here with their oiled hats, their tight sleeves, and their imbecile air ; and they are asses to a man. So are the young men who turn their backs upon excellent chances of succeeding in life, upon new openings and promising careers ; who will not tackle kiin'.ly to work because they think it umu.igenial or possibly degrading; who will not take pains to win the favours of relatives or superiors, whose approval may bring in the long-run advancement or substantial reward. Fortune may help them on in spite of themselves ; but even in prosperity they will be as.ses, and the hidden taint will someday assert itself, and the disguised lion will lose its skin or betray its identity by an unmistakable bray. Were it not that foolishness is as infectous as typhoid, the presence of so many asses amongst us would give us little concern. But as one fool makes many, so does one ass, whatever his form of idiotcy, become the nucleus and rallying_-point for a number of his kind. Assishness, in this respect, becomes a positive nuisance, and can only be dealt with effectively by such strong measures as Solomon recommended ages ago.