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"CHEEK."

BY W. GEO. BEERS, MONTREAL.

HERE are writers and speakers in the | which, like Diptheria and some contagious United States, so anxious to improve affections, is a modern complaint, unknown our mother-tongue, that they would fain in- to Celsus, and, like shop-lifting and drunkenclude in the Munroe doctrine the Americani-ness, deserves to be dubbed as a genuine zation of the speech of Shakspere. This taint disease, and dignified with a Greek derivaof Democratic irreverence has as yet but tion. Brain diseases are getting more comfaintly affected general usage; but there have | mon-not because we have more or better been peculiar phrases coined across the lines, brains than our forefathers, but because we which fit themselves so well to the lips and work them harder and more spasmodically, instincts of men as to gain almost immediate and get less fresh air; and there are social currency, and become woven into our best and political circumstances to-day exciting literature. At first they may have the ring mental extravagances that had no existence and reputation of slang, but gradually lose in eras gone by. their inelegancy, and gravitate into "the pure well of English undefiled." Every country, particularly with the civilization of this continent, must necessarily add words to its language, and there are indigenous phrases used generally by our most cultivated men in America, which are perfectly in place here, though unclassical in the literature of Great Britain.

It is bliss to be ignorant of the pedigree of many of the words we use, as it is bliss to some noble families to be oblivious of their ancestry beyond one generation, or as we are content to drink water without a microscopical examination. Among words whose origin might possibly be traced back to an unenviable period, but which have become fairly adopted as American additions to the English tongue, I have selected the one heading this paper, as expressive of a very prevailing infirmity in the atmosphere of America.

Borrowing from the license now monopolized by poets—and which has contributed immensely to encourage poor poetry, I will venture to class this "cheek" among the mental disorders of the present day; one

A sarcastic Italian once observed, that possibly a sufficiently powerful microscope might be made to reveal the globules of nobility in the human blood; but we need nothing so extraordinary to detect the “disease germs" of "cheek" in the human mind and character. We take the child. There is no instance of intelligent innocence as perfect as that of the genuine, natural boy, excepting, of course, the genuine natural girl. Real children have a native frankness that can never be mistaken for "cheek." They are always innocents, even in spontaneous sport or premeditated mischief. They are neither the street-waif with orphan heart and neglected soul, nor the species of young parties who ape the false show and the artificial manners of their seniors; who put on airs, and grow into their teens with an affected disrelish for marbles and ragdolls. They have hearts beating for play, not for moping, and take to childish games as instinctively as goslings take to water. You may meet clusters of such children anywhere, of parentage rich and poor, but all rich in content, mingling and manufacturing mud-pies together, without a thought

of formality or a blemish of pride. But let harsh orthodox precepts of propriety be constantly dinned in their ears; let noise be proscribed in nurseries, and parlours made sacred against the intrusion of the sunshine of home and the sunshine of heaven; let the children be taught to frame pretty responses, and to show off their talkativeness and training; let them be flattered to their faces, and given a good deal their own way, and you may safely trust to their instinct and human nature to develop the quick growth of cheek.

There are few more offensive specimens of inordinate "cheek" among young people, than those outrages on boyhood who missed their due share of thrashing in their tender years; who aspire to be better dressed than their companions; and whose chief good, like the cinnamon tree, is confined to their bark; who know the art of matching a glove to a coat long before they know how to spell; who give up manly field-sports to be, as they think, more manly in learning to smoke; who fondly imagine stray twigs of hair below the lobe of the ear to be incipient whiskers, and the tender down which has been on the upper lip since the hour of their birth, to be preternatural moustaches; who would be in a perpetual blush in church, and wear a look of the deepest degradation if they knew that they had on pants bagged at the knees; whose friendship is won when you don a new suit of clothes, but lost when time makes it threadbare, and who think less of a stain in the character than a crease in a shirt.

There can be no mistake made in distinguishing cheek from that self-confidence which forms one of the finest master-traits in the character of the Anglo-Saxon race. There are circumstances of favour or fortune in the life of individuals, as in the geographical position and history of nations, which tend to develop a quiet consciousness of power. But no one would put in the same category the confidence of Palmerston,

guiding the helm of State, and the conceit of Sancho Panza ruling a kingdom; the consciousness of Nelson, when a middy, that he would one day have a despatch to himself, and the fixed opinion of coxswain Harry that he ought to have command of the fleet; the faith in himself and his men of Sir Colin Campbell, when he received the Russian cavalry with British infantry in line instead of in column-and beat them;-and the sanguine conviction of the Fenians that they could take Canada; the belief of D'Israeli, that the House of Commons would one day listen to him, and the belief of that quintessence of cheek, George F. Train, that he will be the next President of the United States. I do not pretend to defend great men from the imputation of cheek. History and Biography are full of familiar instances of their weakness in this respect; yet it is more the exception than the rule. Cicero's constant cry was "Praise me !" Epicurus, writing to a minister of state, declared: "If you desire glory, nothing can bestow it more than the letters I write to you." Buffon, speaking of great geniuses, said there were not more than five-"Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself."

When great men err, there is surely some excuse for us. It can scarcely be considered egotism when one talks of himself disparagingly, and attempts to point a moral and illustrate a case from the follies of his own youth.

Long before the eruption of my wisdom teeth, about the time of St. Valentine's Day, I awakened one morning to the conviction that the Muses had inspired me with the poetic spirit, and that I was the coming man: an experience common to most of us in our tender years. I had picked up the trick of jingle, and the art of measuring poetic feet, and had set my eyes in fine frenzies rolling over epics and odes, sonnets and lays, until I could turn the lowing of a cow into a pastoral, and the death of a pup into a monody.

A New York monthly had at that time a

large circulation in Canada, and I selected it as the harbinger of my fame, with a very confident feeling that it was going to be good for the monthly. Like a respected Montreal editor who, in relating his early literary efforts said: "I wrote for Blackwood, but my articles never appeared," I can say that I wrote for that New York monthly, but the only notice taken of my productions was among the "Answers to Correspondents," where I found the titles of my poems, with the polite and pithy "Declined with thanks." It was a long time before I could feel or say a good word for New York, but there was a grim grain of consolation to a boy in these "thanks," and I persisted in besieging various other journals at home and abroad, until at last one unfortunate editor inserted my masterpiece of pathos, which had been six times sent to other quarters, and as many times politely returned. Such are the vicissitudes of genius!

I remember this divine effusion was entitled "Dear to me," and began as follows:

"Dear to me is the spot where I was born, Dear to me is the cot where I saw morn, Lear to me is the sky in blue arrayed Dear to me are the fields where once I strayed," and so on, as long as my arm. Now the genius in this effort was to me quite apparent. It was the fine scope given for bringing in everything in general, and anything in particular one wanted to say, comprising volumes in a single poem, and by the addition of an infinity of "Dear to me," line below line, leaving room for filling up the blanks as one's ideas of things "dear" became enlarged.

In the love of political life we find a strong incentive to cheek. There is something in the atmosphere of municipal and legislative halls which develops the bad parts of human nature, as some localities engender miasma. The patriotism loudly proclaimed on nomination day tames down after election; and in cases not a few, Sam Slick's interpretation of the Latin line may be

well applied-" mori," the more I get, "pro patria," by the country, "dulce est," the sweeter it is. I do not know whether European Governments attract the fifth-rate men who so frequently rise to the surface in political matters in America; but if so, they are cheated of notoriety, unless in a prison, and a better interpretation of "liberty" than we possess soon closes their career. The rascality which succeeds in American politics, has become a by-word of the world, and is only an emanation of the most inordinate cheek, forcing itself into position by virtue of its consummate impudence. Democratic institutions are more prolific of this than any other. They equalize the political value and, to some extent, the social standing of men, without equalizing talent and education. Mere wealth is a first consideration, and the bar-room bully who can influence most votes, no matter whence they come, is a greater man in the eyes of an aspirant than the first gentleman in the land.

In the professions we find the highest development of cheek, because in them the individuality of a man is most marked. In the highest, that of Theology, we probably find the least; but with due respect to the Pulpit-and it ought to be open to criticism and better able to stand it than the Press-there is sometimes an element of cheek creeping up, which is not only absurd but dangerous in a profession concerned with the highest interests of the human race. A respectable young man mounts the rostrum before an audience who have no superstitious fear of his office. His profession is with him a matter of dollars and cents and decency; his piety is mechanical. His first aim is to remind the audience of his individuality; he dogmatizes on doctrines he little understands, and lays down. the law with his tongue and fist as if the truth depended solely upon his opinions. The thoughts and desires of "I" seem to have more interest for himself, and more convincing force, in his own estimation, than the

most devoted attention for no other purpose than to feed their self-complacency and nourish their spleen. "The defects of great men," says D'Israeli, "are the consolations of the dunces." These are the people who expect a preacher to dovetail the gospel with their views; to conform his tone of voice, his gestures, and his clerical and every-day dress to their ideal; to smother his political opinions, and subdue his love of recreation; to marry the woman they choose, or which is worse, not to marry the woman they do not choose; and to consider the purchase of his freedom of opinion and action a stipulated condition of his call.

thoughts and desires of St. Paul. I have in my mind, as I write, a certain young parson, and young parsons are no more free from error in their specialty than young doctors and lawyers in theirs. He has some talent, great physical energy, and a desire to do good; but his conceit impels him to thrust into prominence his own views, or the views of others as his own, thinking originality of expression to be genius as well as gospel, and a succession of light feats of emphasis and heavy ones of gesture the sure way to success. The personal pronoun "I" overshadows every doctrine, and crosses every thought; and he is not unlike the artist, Haydon, who took ten times more pains to persuade people he had painted certain pic-trations of inordinate cheek; for newspaper tures than he took to paint them. The views of old theologians he impatiently and impertinently denies, with something of the effect of a terrier yelping at the full moon. To be forcible he thinks he must be peculiar. He leaves his congregation musing more upon his manner than his matter, without a grain of good or a germ of thought

to carry away.

In every church—except ours of course for in churches like professions there is something rotten in all except our own-there are persons who constitute themselves sermoncritics, by grace of a work or two on theology they have read, and who are very fair examples of cheek. Looking around upon the audience during a sermon, one may pick out these sermon-cynics as easily as copper coin from silver. Knowing nods and sapient looks distinguish them, or shakes of disapproval, from the shoulders to the heels. Let the preacher misquote, and you know just the pews to look to for the sage and sarcastic grin; let him make a lapsus linguæ of any kind, and you know just who will how their quickness of perception. There are conceited and envious cynics in church as well as in literature, who, like the two critics that regularly dogged the writings of Racine and Pope as they appeared, pay the

The Press affords some characteristic illus

men in this thinking age are too prone to believe that they are expected to be positive in matters beyond their ken, and to "say something" about every question, however abstruse; and are thus tempted to try their prentice pen in speculations beyond the bounds of even their intelligence. Hundreds of newspapers are mere rehashes of others, and, like a parenthesis, could be taken away and never be missed. In Pekin they occasionally behead editors who print false news, and the Pekin papers are very trustworthy. It is perhaps better that the loss of caste and the possibility of litigation should supersede this peremptory kind of punishment, else a large number of the "Fourth Estate" would need be hydra-headed.

Every profession has its men of cheek, whose chief delight is in expatiating on their own merits, and depreciating their confreres. They are just the same in theology, politics, law, medicine and dentistry. They owe their prominence much more to the force of their impudence than to any ability they possess. They "talk shop talk shop" at every opening; modesty is not in their nomenclature. As politicians they will lay claim to the origination of great national undertakings, on the strength of having referred to them in conversation, as other men probably did for

knowledge of their particular profession. Yet when you lay the scalpel of criticism to their pretensions, you expose their superficiality, and prove them to be cheek.

No educated talent is more commonly productive of cheek than fluency in speaking. One of the peculiar propensities of this intellectual age seems to be that of all classes for speaking in public. Men are no more generally fitted to become public speakers than authors and artists, yet how many thousands have wasted lives in fruitless

decades before them; and they live in a small atmosphere of their own, with the selfsatisfied conviction that the prosperity of the country is due to their personal exertions. As lawyers they are ready to "hire out their words and anger" for any and every scheme where they may advertise their eloquence, and will even condescend to sacrifice fair prospects in their profession that they may be pilloried in the annals of their country. As physicians or dentists they arrogantly boast of their superior knowledge, and go to any extreme to obtain a prac-efforts to be one or the other! There is an tice. By dint of quack advertising, and, to speak truly, plain lying; by poking cards and circulars and pamphlets into every available and advantageous nook and corner; by the use of show-cases and barbarous signs, and by boasting of their superior facilities, peculiar methods, practice, and "previous residence in New York" (save the mark) they contrive to gain what they would never have gained by honest means. They are not students or lovers of books; they have a mere smattering of their profession, yet assume to be inspired; they are perfect parasites where they fear, and slanderers where they dare. Jealousy is the fever of their existence, and the success of a faithful confrere is to them a sort of a personal insult. They have no professional esprit de corps: if they associate it is to fish for office or to find fault. The pleasantest paragraph they can read relating to a competitor is his obituary. An epidemic which carries off two or three, or a fire which burns out a dozen, restores their amiability, and puts them in the seventh heaven of delight. They cannot recognize cheek in themselves, but scent it out with a sort of instinct in any one else. Anything they do is "unusual" they never admit having failed; and the idea of competitors being able to do what they have done is beyond the bounds of possibility. Indeed they will look you in the face with the stolidity of eye of an oyster, and assume a sort of monopoly of

innate faith, no doubt, in some natures, which failure only strengthens and neglect only stimulates, impelling to persistence and often to success; but has not every scribbler who could persuade his words to rhyme, and every aspirant who could deface a foot of canvass with his emptiness, imagined the "divine afflatus" to have been specially vouchsafed to him? True, our first efforts must be immature, and first failures ought to be an incentive to perseverance, or the world will retrogade; but more than half the failures in every literary sphere have their origin in a disregard of the study of first principles, and of the faithful reiteration of lessons that may be dull, but which the finest genius cannot afford to contemn. In the matter of public speaking, it is so common to suppose that facility of expression should be the chief aim of those whose ambition it is to address an audience, or to utter their thoughts in print, that many come to regard the man who can say the most words in a breath, even if he has to gasp for very life at the end, and the writer who can spin out the longest yarn on any given subject, (such, for instance, as the savant mentioned by Moore in his Diary, who wrote several folio volumes on the "Digestion of a Flea") as the men who have mastered their subject and are amply qualified to teach. One who has a superabundance of cheek, and the accompanying contempt for his audience, may soon learn

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