Mammas and daughters may learn a useful lesson from these three stories. Such imposition, involving misery for life, it has been proved is possible, even where there is no love to charm with siren spell, no passion to drown the voice of reasonnone of that blissful hallucination which makes all the hours between the offer' and the wedding, hours of the heart, but not of the head; hours during which we have seen even a lady of half a hundred years in a mood to credit everything from her hoary-headed lover, deaf to the warnings of all the world besides. Affection of all kinds makes men gullible, because it blinds them. The folly of parents with their children is so proverbial that fond and foolish have become convertible terms. Most romantic and marvellous stories in a court of justice have been traced to the creative powers of a parent's mind; leading on, step by step, some wicked, lying child who had wit enough to adopt the suggestions of leading questions. For nothing is too improbable for a parent to believe, in excuse for a child. This It is commonly remarked, 'If persons would dispassionately consider;' 'If they would honestly consult their own sense,' and the like.-But on any question vitally affecting us, it is not so easy to think dispassionately. Do you doubt it? shall be the proof: How seldom do persons really ask advice; how much more frequently do they only ask for confirmation? Every lawyer will tell you that the very client who comes for an opinion invariably rather argues than consults, and so pertinaciously conceals or glosses over the very facts on which any impartial opinion can possibly be formed, that it is often hard to torture and to wrest them from him. And could not the Mentor within the breast tell the same story? Can we imagine that we are ever likely to advise with ourselves at all more honestly than when we consult our lawyer or our friend? The reason of this preposterous folly is, that a man never takes the trouble to consult or ask advice till he is already interested in one con clusion; and that interest draws the mind aside so forcibly in one direction, that he proves utterly impatient of being made to look in the other. In the three cases related, the greed of money, as well as conceit and self-love, supplied the delusive medium. Of all dust to throw in a man's eyes there is none like golɗ dust. The very news of a fortune to be had almost for the asking; the lottery prize, the opening of the millionaire's will, or the ventures of California-the very thoughts of such golden visions will throw even soberminded people off their balance in a moment. In the times of bubble manias, more brains have been turned by fortunes gained than by fortunes lost; and every season of speculation proves again and again that, if once you quicken the pulse -if once you fire the minds of men by the prospect of sudden riches, and the earnings of a life all grasped within an hour-so all-engrossing is the object, that there is no limit to a man's credulity about the means of realizing it. It is true now, as in the days of Thucydides, that in all such exciting moments, men will only talk one way; and whoever is bold enough to talk the other is at once set down as disaffected, or at all events as a very disagreeable sort of fellow. One fact in the merchant's history singularly illustrates a very common fallacy-one that has hoodwinked many a dupe. When Mrs. Clyde had been seen to run like an intimate friend into the rich lady's house, this confirmation of one point was taken as a confirmation of all; so very slight a matter will satisfy us of what we wish to find true. In looking for proofs, men are too ready to generalize. After cracking one or two nuts, though chosen by the audacious seller, we too fondly believe well of the rest. While, then, we are so ready to deceive ourselves, who can wonder at the success of any imposture, where others are artfully flattering and inflaming our own self-love, and leading us on in the very direction in which we are already too prone to go? |
