AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
43
in his own quiet way, my father exercised an influence over his family of one boy and six girls that was not
immediately obvious. I doubt whether he would have tried to give a definition of the word `philosophy', and yet he
had a simple nature, a wisdom that knew no parade, and often with self-depreciation he had marked influence on a
growing child.
He would appreciate the rustic wit of Corin the shepherd in As You Like It:
Touchstone
`Hast any philosophy in thee shepherd?'
Corin
`No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is: and that he that wants money,
means, and content is without three good friends: that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn;
that good pasture makes fat sheep, that a great cause of the night is lack of sun: that he that hath
learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding and comes of a very dull kindred'.
As I have said elsewhere, I had no Christian upbringing. The Scriptures were unknown, the Gospel and its
blessings like the language of a foreign land. Recognising all this, I nevertheless cannot help but be grateful that my
father did according to his light, seek to play a father's part.
How many boys of twelve have been taken aside, and had the advice of old Polonius read and explained to
them? This passage is lacking in spiritual grace, yet for what it was worth, think of the effect upon a schoolboy
hearing for the first time such counsel as:
`Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in
Bear't that th'opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
* * * * *
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man'.
On one occasion he drew me aside and said with purposed mock solemnity:
`Boy, remember this. It's most unlucky to fall down and break your neck ON WEDNESDAY'.
By the time I had puzzled out this emphasis on Wednesday, I could say with intent:
`It is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings'.
My father also had a way of throwing into a conversation a simple bit of proverbial wisdom. For example, when
someone had been unduly stressing the obligation that the young folk had to support their aged parents, he to their
surprise, said:
`Young sparrows don't save up to feed old sparrows' and left it at that. Had such a proverb come from an
undutiful son or daughter it would have worn a different complexion.
Without enlarging on this influence on young outlook, here are a few more samples of his rude yet very sane and
kindly philosophy.