The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table | Page 4

like the cobra-di-capello. You
remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent
paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until
he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain
with blood are only second in importance to its own organization. The bulbous-headed
fellows that steam well when they are at work are the men that draw big audiences and
give us marrowy books and pictures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold when
he is writing. A great writer and speaker once told me that he often wrote with his feet in
hot water; but for this, ALL his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury
sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer.
- You don't suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many postage-stamps,
do you,--each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mistaken. He must be a poor
creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of
advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a
protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do
you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board
with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a
conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly
the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred
times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice over, and yet be
held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an inland city, where dwells a
Litteratrice of note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. She
pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new occupation. "Yes," he replied, "I

am like the Huma, the bird that never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on
the wing."--Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once more for the same
purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, and a second meeting with the distinguished
lady. "You are constantly going from place to place," she said.--"Yes," he answered, "I
am like the Huma,"--and finished the sentence as before.
What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech, word for word,
twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had
embellished his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On
the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious fowl until the recurrence of
precisely the same circumstances brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to have
been proud of the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound
brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage's
calculating machine.
- What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A
Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a
blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better,
though it grind a thousand bushels of them!
I have an immense respect for a man of talents PLUS "the mathematics." But the
calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the
smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or
four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I
had not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of
the ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking
in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers is a kind of "detached lever"
arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor watch--I suppose it is about as
common as the power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare
endowment.
- Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized knowledge, are things
men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very wise; but for this encouraging
principle how many small talents and little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk
about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it
keeps it sweet,