Walter Aimwell

“ Charlestown was the birthplace and childhood’s home of Walter Aimwell; and, when it was no longer the place of his actual residence, his feet retrod its streets as often as his limited leisure permitted.
I must think these facts had some degree of influence upon his mind and character. His intellect had such a power of quiet observation, and of ready and just reflection, that the objects about him could not escape his attention, nor could the significance of those objects. Charlestown, like a noble matron of old Greece, hung about his childhood and youth a tapestry of stately figures ”

“ I am as good, and perhaps better, than the majority of men. And I do not see but I am as good as those men who make great professions of piety. To be sure, I have some faults, and so have they, too. But God will overlook these little failings.’ And if he sees a man who appears to abhor himself, and repent in dust and ashes, he immediately sets him down as a fanatic.
“But, oh, when the Spirit reaches that heart, what a change! How quickly does his righteousness disappear, or become as filthy rags. When the commandment comes, then he says with Paul, ‘Sin revived and I died.’” ”

“ Education is too precious a boon to be purchased without a struggle, but it is worth a thousand times all that it costs. The child that should prefer to go through the world toothless, rather than endure for a little while the pain of teething, would be less foolish than those children who would rather grow up in ignorance than subject themselves for a time to the labors and discipline of the schoolroom. ”

“ Humility is necessary even for the seeing of much truth, to say nothing of saying it. Next to the humility needful to see the truth without subjecting it to the refractions of our own wicked moods, a steady, faithful mind and will are almost indispensable to keep us from involuntarily giving hue to recital, according to the partialities or prejudices of our hearers. [117] Humility, courage, strength, are prerequisites to truth-telling, no more to be dispensed with than conscience. ”

“ And yet, as has been before intimated, the whole secret of such a life seems to be the early adoption of, and unwavering adherence to, a complete system of Christian morals. Any New England boy of ordinary abilities, if he will, can compass all that. It is the dictate of common sense to do it. Look at it. Here you are, [220] in existence; you cannot help that, even if you should wish to do so. Even if you should so mutilate your body that your lungs could not breathe nor your heart beat, you could not stop being alive. You are alive in a universe governed by certain laws. ”

“ I have known many different persons, and some whose performances very far excelled those of others in truthfulness and beauty of design and finish of workmanship; but I never had the fortune to see one of those human curiosities who succeed, as one may say, by accident, and without patience and effort. If a hearty love of truth, and a willingness patiently to work for it, is genius, no doubt Walter Aimwell had great genius; but so might have many a one who seems to be lying about the highways and byways of human society, apparently as useful as a loose pebble in the gutter. ”

“ There is another, looking toward the sunrise, that is glorious with the blood of heroes. On the hill-tops beside the churches, on the slopes beside the buried great and good, all about the town, are the free schools of a people that wisely love their children and the future. Grim, and with some suggestion of remoteness, glower the barred windows of the prison that throws its shadow over those recreant sons that forget lesson and example. ”

“ Now there is use in “striving against nature,” as that phrase is generally understood; else there is no use in the Christian religion, and we may at once relinquish its doctrines and precepts as so many superfluities, and look upon the matchless history in the Gospels as a splendid blunder. If there is no use in striving against nature when nature is in the wrong, or takes the less noble side of the question, then we can dispense, not only with Christianity, but with all schools and all discipline. ”