Nobody’s Story

He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was always silently

rolling onto a vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on ever since the world began.

It had changed its course sometimes and turned into new channels, leaving its old

ways dry and barren, but it had ever been upon the flow and ever was to flow until

time should be no more. Against its strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head.

No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence,

ever strayed back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of the river set resistlessly

towards it, and the tide never stopped, any more than the earth stops in its circling

around the sun.

He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. He had no hope of ever being

rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he was quite content, GOD knows,

to labor with a cheerful will. He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons

and daughters gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising up

betimes until they’re lying down at night. Beyond this destiny, he had no prospect,

and he sought none.

There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making in the neighborhood

where he dwelt, but he had nothing to do with that. Such clash and uproar came from

the Bigwig family, at the unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marveled much.

They set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, before his door;

and darkened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses.

He wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humored way he had,

and kept at his hard work.

The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people thereabouts and all

the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the trouble of thinking for himself

and managing himself and his affairs.

“Why truly,” said he, “I have little time upon my hands, and if you will be so good as to take care of me, in return for the money I pay over.” — for the Bigwig family were not above his money—“I shall be relieved and much obliged, considering that you
know best.”

Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the ugly images of horses

which he was expected to fall down and worship.

“I don’t understand all this,” said he, rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly. “But it has a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out.”

“It means,” returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what he said, “honor and glory in the highest, to the highest merit.”

“Oh!” said he. And he was glad to hear that.

But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, he failed

to find a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the son of a Warwickshire

wool- dealer, or any single countryman whomsoever of that kind. He could find none

of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and his children from terrific

and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his forefathers from the condition

of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and high existence to the humblest,

whose skill had filled the working man’s world with accumulated wonders. Whereas,

he did find others whom he knew no good of and even others whom he knew much

ill of.

“Humph!” said he. “I don’t quite understand it.”

So, he went home and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his mind.

Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened streets; but it was

a precious place to him. The hands of his wife were hardened with toil, and she was

old before her time, but she was dear to him. His children, stunted in their growth,

bore traces of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty in his sight. Above all other

things, it was an earnest desire of this man’s soul that his children should be taught.

“If I am sometimes misled,” said he, “for want of knowledge, at least let them know better and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard for me to reap the harvest of pleasure and instruction that is stored in books, let it be easier for them.”

But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning what it was

lawful to teach to this man’s children. Some of the family insisted on such a thing

being primary and indispensable above all other things, and others of the family

insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above all other things;

and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered

charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay

and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummelings, and fell together

by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening

snatches at his fireside, sees the demon Ignorance arise there, and takes his children

to themselves. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge;

he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sensuality to brutality and crime;

he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so, changing into

cunning and suspicion that he could have rather wished them idiots.

“I don’t understand this any the better,” said he, “but I think it cannot be right. Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest against this as my wrong!”

Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived, and his nature

kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he saw how much

monotony and weariness there were, and thence how drunkenness arose with all its

train of ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family and said,

“We are a laboring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that laboring people of whatever condition were made—by a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it— to be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into when we rest without it. Come! Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!”

But, here, the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar, absolutely deafening. When some

few voices were faintly heard, proposing to show him the wonders of the world,

the greatness of creation, the mighty changes of time, the workings of nature,

and the beauties of art—to show him these things, that is to say, at any period of his

life when he could look upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs such roaring

and raving, such palpitating and petitioning, such maundering and memorializing,

such name-calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning

and feeble replying—where “I dare not” waited on “I would”—that the poor fellow stood

aghast, staring wildly around.

“Have I provoked all this,” said he, with his hands to his affrighted ears, “by what was meant to be an innocent request, plainly arising out of my familiar experience
and the common knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes? I don’t understand, and I am not understood. What is to come of such a state of things!”

He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question, when the news

began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among the laborers and was slaying

them by thousands. Going forth to look about him, he soon found this to be true.

The dying and the dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses among which

his life was passed. New poison was distilled into the always murky, always sickening

air. The robust and the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother, all were

stricken down alike.

What means of flight had he? He remained there, where he was, and saw those

who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to him and would have said

some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom, but he replied:

“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to the residence in this fetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie oppressed! But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and callous creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies of those who die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so familiar with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and, Teacher, then I will hear—none know better than you, how willingly—of Him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all human sorrow!”

He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and stood near to him

dressed in black. He also had suffered heavily. His young wife, his beautiful and good

young wife, was dead; so, too, his only child.

“Master, ’tis hard to bear—I know it—but be comforted. I would give you comfort if I could.”

The Master thanked him from his heart but said he,

“O, you laboring men! The calamity began among you. If you had but lived more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that I am this day.”

“Master,” returned the other, shaking his head, “I have begun to understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors until we are united with that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things that are right. We cannot live healthily and decently unless they who undertook to manage us provide the means. We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us; we cannot be rationally amused unless they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false gods of our own while they set up so many of theirs in all the public places. The evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of unnatural restraint, and the denial of humanizing enjoyments will all come from us, and none of them will stop with us. They will spread far and wide. They always do; they always have done—just like the pestilence. I understand so much, I think, at last.”

But the Master said again, “O, you laboring men! How seldom do we ever hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!”

“Master,” he replied, “I am Nobody and little likely to be heard of (nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is some trouble. But it never begins with me, and it never can end with me. As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from me.”

There was so much reason in what he said that the Bigwig family, getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that were right—at all events, so far as the said things were associated with the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence. But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed their falling out among themselves and did nothing. Consequently, the scourge appeared again—low down as before—and spread avenging upward as before and carried off vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the least degree, he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.

So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way, and this, in the main, is the whole

of Nobody’s Story.

Had he no name, you ask? Perhaps it was Legion. It matters little what his name was.

Let us call him Legion.

If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo, you would have seen,

in some quiet little church, a monument erected by faithful companions in arms

to the memory of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D, and E, Lieutenants F and G,

Ensigns H, I, and J, seven non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank

and file, who fell in the discharge of their duty on a memorable day.

The story of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth. They bear their share

of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they leave no name but

in the mass. The march of the proudest of us leads to the dusty way by which

they go. O! Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire and not forget

them when it is burnt out.