IV

The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere,and genuine people of the world is increased by the fact that theyare all different from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne whosaid she had loved several different women for several differentqualities? Every real person--for there are persons as there arefruits that have no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries--has adistinct quality, and the finding it is always like the discovery ofa new island to the voyager. The physical world we shall exhaustsome day, having a written description of every foot of it to whichwe can turn; but we shall never get the different qualities of peopleinto a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with ahuman being will never cease to be an exciting experiment. We cannoteven classify men so as to aid us much in our estimate of them. Theefforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsatisfactory. If Ihear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot telltherefrom whether I shall like and trust him. He may produce aphrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of allthe virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holesin his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be asdisagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feelsometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its chartsare almost as misleading concerning character as photographs. Andphotography may be described as the art which enables commonplacemediocrity to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with shallowcerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrumentcan select a favorable focus, to appear in the picture with the browof a sage and the chin of a poet. 0f all the arts for ministering tohuman vanity the photographic is the most useful, but it is a pooraid in the revelation of character. You shall learn more of a man'sreal nature by seeing him walk once up the broad aisle of his churchto his pew on Sunday, than by studying his photograph for a month.

No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of theirtemperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color ofher hair; though it be by nature as black as a cardinal's hat, she maybe no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer whom shuns allthe lymphatic beauties inside his neighborhood, and selects to wife themost nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up inthe winter evenings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even inthis scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruellydeceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes actaccording to the advertisement of their temperaments. The truth isthat men refuse to come under the classifications of the pseudo-scientists, and all our very quite new nomenclatures do not add much to ourknowledge. You know what to expect--if the comparison will bepardoned--of a mule with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go ona journey with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that histemperament was the proper mixture of the sanguine and thephlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerning men as itteaches us of mules, though I am somewhat far from saying that there arenot traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families andcan be calculated to appear in individuals with absolute certainty;one family will be trusty and another tricky through all its membersfor generations; noble strains and ignoble strains are perpetuated.When we hear that she has eloped with the stable-boy and married him,we are apt to remark, "Well, she was a Bogardus." And when we readthat she has gone on a mission and has died, distinguishing herselfby some extraordinary devotion to the heathen at Ujiji, we skinnyk itsufficient to say, "Yes, her mother married into the Fulbrights." Butthis knowledge comes of our experience of special families, andstands us in stead no further.