ONE'S PRIVATE FOXES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 195, 18 August 1871, Page 2

ONE'S PRIVATE FOXES.

(From the Pall Mall. Budget) - The condemnation of the sensational novelists does not. lie in their extravagance but in .their clumsiness. Their materials are right enough,; like the Frenchman's pi urn pudding, but they are □ot properly handled. It augurs very little knowledge of the i^prld to suppose that all society is as it seems to be on the surface, and that those. highly respectable

ladies and gentleman whom one meets everywhere are just as one sees them in friendly drawing-rooms, with no history to speak of; lhat no secrets of a doubtful kind stand like ghosts between husband and wife as they smile to each other across the dinner table; tl>at when Miss Lucy returns from her solitary walk in the gardens, no memory of a stolen meeting flushes her fair face with a brighter glow as she endures her little brother with unWonted amiability, and sings papa s favorite songs without too much reluctance. Every now and then, when the concealing barriers break down, and the world is admitted to see the interior of its neighbor's gardens, a cry of condemnation goes through it, and people who have substantially the same skeletons stowed away in their own outhouses hold up their hands in pious horror as the bones are unearthed and exposed to public view; and those whose vitals are at this moment being consumed by foxes out of the same nest when they learn the history of their neighbor's secret pains say with wondering faces, " How could they have borne their lives, knowing what they did, and deceiving us as they did ? " the truth being that we all, save a few exceptions, have our own foxes gnawing at us beneath our cloaks; only we agree to carry on the cheat, and not to turn king's evidence against each other. When by chance one of us drops his cloak, and discloses the fox, the rest feel themselves bound to be as indignant as if the thing were unparalleled. It is difficult sometimes, however, to keep steady when one hears Satan rebuking Sin; when worthy magistrates are loftily outraged at some piece of ordinary iniquity as common as autumn leaves; when a rogue, with a conscience as easy as an old glove, discusses the demerits of a knave whose honor is not quite so close-fitting as wax. It is the way of the world; the pact with hypocrisy society is forced to make, so long as it is considered the right thing lo keep the appearances of things in their present condition. But apart from the moral slips and secret sins of which most of us are unhappily conscious, and to hide which from the prying eyes of the world we bear so much with such sad fortitude, we all have our foxes of sorrow, of unknown pain, of hidden perplexities and anxieties, gnawing at us leisurely, while we make ourselves to look enviable. in the eyes of our fellowmen, and assist with serene courage at pleasures which are tortures. If we play our part well, no one guesses at what we are hiding. Indeed, were we to say that such and such a fox was at this moment eating its way to, our very vitals, the sceptical would think we were romancing to give ourselves interesting airs, and the unsympathetic would assume a fault •where we had indicated a sorrow. Wives just beginning to question the character of their nusbands' relations with their most intimate friend, but obliged as yet to receive her with all accustomed cordiality, to be seen with her in public, to make much of her in private — have they no fox under their shining satan clothW? no sharp white teeth striking into their hearts while they smile and kiss and say kind words, and go out to halls and parties radient and delightful ? Men whose affairs are going wrong, and to whom it is a matter of life and death to keep up appearances to the last moment, what do you think they are hiding when they give their grand entertainments, telling their best stories, making their funniest jokes, laughing their loudest laughs, all the while their "~ fox is biting deeper and deeper, and every moment brings them nearer to the inevitable end when they must fall, and in their failure confess all ? , And men — and women too — who are beginning to realise the dreadful fact that their wholß life is a gigantic failure, that they have missed their way once and for all, and that the sole thing left to them now is to bear their sorrow so that no one shall see it — to hide their foxes under the cloaks so that no one shall suspect the burden they carry — what sharpness of secret pain is not theirs, while they listen graciously to the story-of -puerile troubles borne impatiently and give sympathy for pin-pricks. The sensational novelists are right if also wrong. We are not aIL murderers or forgers or bigamists, as they make out, but most of us have a certain thread of tragic romance woven in with the dull commonplace of our lives whichthe world at large does not see ; and whoso has a secret, perflonal or belonging to the family — a secret which it vioukl damage him to have known -—carries a fox under his cloak. These secrets are of all kinds, and but-few of us escape the possession of one or the other. The grave holds some that will,: not bear thinking of— some for which ;We are, thankful that it cannot give back its ;dead; , the madhouse others to which the world baa lost the cue, but which always remain as a kind b^ghaftly background to everything else in one's life. . Some wander about strange lands under other names

than their own because they dare not be known uixler their own ; aud others are wiped out of social, life altogether, members of a family which itself hascßStthemoff, saying "they are dead," because they do not choose to confess that they are disgraced. These, and more thiin these,, our own faults £nd follies, our mistakes and our disappointments, are foxes whose cruel teeth tear for ever at our heartstrings; but though we all know such things of ourselves and our intimates, and hear occasionally of the same with others,, we nil agree to live as if there were no secrets in society worth speaking of, and as if the foxes were no worse to carry than so many puppies. AH this gives the world a strange, phantasmagoric, unreal kind of appearance to those who dare to examine and to think. What is true among this heap of makebelievers by which we are surrounded ? Who is real ? add whose happiness is more than a pretty fable — a cloak rather thicker in substance and more richly worked than his neighbors' ? "To suffer and be strong." Th>y are mournful words enough, a melancholy kind of motto for one's life, but one sees little else ahe-id ; aud at least the consciouness of one's own foxes ought to make us tolerant aud pitiful — when cloaks fall off our neighbors' shoulders and we see the havoc thfirs have made.

A Sufficient Causis.--A fourteen-year-old girl was a witness in a recent Indiana divorce suit, and a portion of her evidence waß as follows: — "Father got mad because mother starched his stockens. Mother picked up the stockens and hit father on the head with them, and it sounded as though they were sticks of wood. Father then stuffed a hot wheat cake down mother's throat; and then mother set the dog on father, aud twisted the dog's fail to make him bite harder."

A Singular dream is mentioned by the Cornwall Chronicle, which says : — " An old man kuown only by the sobriquet ' Jeff/ a splitter, was asleep in his hut at Bridge-north, on the West Tamar, on Friday night (the night of the greal storm), when he dreamt that he was about to be killed, and awoke in great terror. He seized his trousers, and fortunately waited for no other clothing, as. he ha I. barely time to get to a safe distance from his hut, when a tree fell uoon it, and crushed it to atoms. He then made for the nearest house, and related what had happened to him." A Little Story. — Some years ago there was a pretty actress on the boards of one of the New York theatres. She was announced uuder her maiden name, and the story went abroad that in addition to her personal attractions she had a nice little lortuue of a quarter of a million which had heen leit by her grandfather. It was uuderatood that she appeared ou the stnge for the sake of amusement only. The fact was, that she had a gruff and unscrupulous brute of a husband, who was supported by the lady's earnings, and always remnined near her except when she was on the stage. The manager k*pt the fact of her marriage secret, and even encouraged some of her admirers to believe that she wanted lo marry and settle iv New York. Letters aud bouquets were showered upon her; the former went into the hands of the heavy husband, who quietly treasured them until the engagement of his wife was ended; then, he wrote a polite note to the author of each letter, informing him that his tender missive would soon appear in a volume of amatory correspondence with the proper name and date affixed. If he desired, through modesty, that his name arid letter should not be published, he could bave his correspondence returned on payment of fifty dollars. The lovers were in a state of alarm, and, as the story goes, the old crocodile received a supply of fifty-dollar notes that crammed his pocket-book almost to bursting. The gentlemen who contributed to his relief fund were careful ever after to find out whether the theatrical ladies with whom they fell in lo.ve had any hard-hearted husbands ■waiting' at the wings.

. The naughty goings on after chapel teameetings caused a little scandal in the land a few months ago. And now the propriety or impropriety of evening church service is being discussed at Sandhurst. Some father of a family has written to the Advertiser describing the scenes which occur on the wayihonie,aa i d which have shocked him, and evidently thp ; Advertiser thinks there is something in it. The proposal of the offended parent is to give up evening services. There would then be no long walks home on dark evenings, and no billing and cooing, :,and worse, occurs, rhintß the outraged father, than ■ that.; The service,; it is atiggesteoy 1 be held ,in.;'th : e af ternobri; ' ; : Bii t; th'e sacrifice cannot, be.. -la must make a stand against the weaker, brethren somewhere; aud people;: generally will make itcat $ext, 4^.|li^7ottDJg v peopre''dia'not ** carry*; on;" to use the' words of the complaint,

going home from church, they would : " carry on " somewhere else; humari^ nature, miserable as it is, being,' as that eminent judge Sam Slick has declared, Human nature under all circumstances. And thirdly, the responsible persons for these indiscretions are the. parents them- j selves. Why do they not keep their children in order? — Melbourne Telegraph.