Reckoning

“ 225.—What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit. ”

“ But sooner or later, John, I knew you'd walk into my shop, and sit down in my chair! That day has come! (He looks into his eyes.) You and I, John, the two of us, have a long account to settle, haven't we? I've been one of your creditors, too! And this is the reckoning, John! You're going to pay me—pay me in full—and you're going to pay me now!
THE CUSTOMER. What are you going to do?
THE BARBER. That's a hard question, John. I'd be justified in cutting your throat, wouldn't I?
THE CUSTOMER. It would be murder!
THE BARBER. Ugly word, isn't it?
THE CUSTOMER. Murder in the first degree! ”

“ In ordinary navigation, statistical computation is not practicable. However, the navigator might estimate at any time the likely error of his dead reckoning or estimated position. With practice, considerable skill in making this estimate is possible. He would take into account, too, the fact that the area of uncertainty might better be represented by an ellipse than a circle, with the major axis along the course line if the estimated error of the speed were greater than that of the course and the minor axis along the course line if the estimated error of the course were greater. ”

“ A system of determining longitude by “lunar distance,” a method which did not require an accurate timepiece, was known, but this product of the minds of mathematicians and astronomers was so involved as to be beyond the capabilities of the uneducated seamen of that day. Consequently, ships were navigated by a combination of dead reckoning and parallel sailing (a system of sailing north or south to the latitude of the destination and then east or west to the destination) . ”

“ To convince you that I consult your interest as much as my own, and that I am not actuated either by ill humour or capriciousness, I will not refuse your reward—I am very sensible one night will be sufficient; and do not in the least doubt, we shall know how to make it so pleasing, the morning will come with regret—but let us not forget, this regret is necessary to happiness; although the illusion may be enchanting, nor flatter ourselves it can be durable. ”

“ Mix with almost all our other ideas. Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection : and there is scarce any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain, I would be understood to signify, whatsoever delights or molests us ; whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or anything operating on our bodies. ”

“ As to myself, I hope I have a great deal of time before me; since I intend one day to be a reformed man. I have very serious reflections now-and-then. Yet am I half afraid of the truth of what my charmer once told me, that a man cannot repent when he will.—Not to hold it, I suppose she meant! ”

“ Thou canst not yet repent, hereafter thou shall; a black cloud of sin as yet obnubilates thy soul, terrifies thy conscience, but this cloud may conceive a rainbow at the last, and be quite dissipated by repentance. Be of good cheer; a child is rational in power, not in act; and so art thou penitent in affection, though not yet in action. 'Tis thy desire to please God, to be heartily sorry; comfort thyself, no time is overpast, 'tis never too late. A desire to repent is repentance itself, though not in nature, yet in God's acceptance; a willing mind is sufficient. ”

“ But it may be said this calculation of pains and pleasures is defective through the omission of one element. Although a man who had a very strong natural impulse towards some vice would appear more likely to promote the tranquillity of his nature by a moderate and circumspect gratification of that [pg 062] vice, than by endeavouring painfully to repress his natural tendencies, yet he possesses a conscience which adjudicates upon his conduct, and its sting or its approval constitutes a pain or pleasure so intense, as more than to redress the balance. ”

“ Wednesday.
Now, my dear parents, I have but this one day between me and the most solemn rite that can be performed. My heart cannot yet shake off this heavy weight. Sure I am ungrateful to the divine goodness, and the favour of the best of benefactors!—Yet I hope I am not!—For, at times, my mind is all exultation, with the prospect of what good to-morrow’s happy solemnity may possibly, by the leave of my generous master, put it in my power to do. O how shall I find words to express, as I ought, my thankfulness, for all the mercies before me! ”

“ It was the first time in my life that I had slept where some human creature was not within the sound of my voice, and from that night I date a change of sentiment, thought, and feeling, which has altered my career, and made me, what I have chosen to be, a recluse. ”

“ That it would be for the happiness as it would certainly be in the power of a man of a temperament such as I have lately described, to quench that conscientious feeling, which by its painful reproaches prevents him from pursuing the course that would be most conducive to his tranquillity, I conceive to be self-evident. And, indeed, on the whole, it is more than doubtful whether conscience, considered apart from the course of action it prescribes, is not the cause of more pain than pleasure. ”

“ But, though present pleasure and pain show their difference and degrees so plainly as not to leave room to mistake; yet, WHEN WE COMPARE PRESENT PLEASURE OR PAIN WITH FUTURE, (which is usually the case in most important determinations of the will,) we often make wrong judgments of them; taking our measures of them in different positions of distance. Objects near our view are apt to be thought greater than those of a larger size that are more remote. ”

“ Confess the truth, said she, that thou art an undone creature; hast been in bed with thy master; and art sorry for it, and for the mischief thou hast occasioned between him and me; and then I’ll pity thee, and persuade him to pack thee off, with a hundred or two of guineas; and some honest farmer may take pity of thee, and patch up thy shame, for the sake of the money; and if nobody will have thee, thou must vow penitence, and be as humble as I once thought thee. ”

“ This their near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and goodness of our Maker, who, designing the preservation of our being, has annexed pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us of the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them. ”

“ He went back to his college a changed man. The old gaiety had gone, and a bitter self-scorn had come which brought out something of the old Reckavile spirit. Women he shunned with horror, as the image of the one perfect woman he had known made the others seem hollow, and talkative beyond measure. ”

“ As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become accustomed to will a particular act ... because it is pleasurable, we at last continue to will it without any reference to its being pleasurable.... In this manner it is that habits of hurtful excess continue to be practised, although they have ceased to be pleasurable, and in this manner also it is that the habit of willing to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not desert the moral hero, even when the reward ... ”

“ But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the rogue good manners: or rather, let us say, he has learned them himself; for he is of nature soft and kindly, and he has put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits; and, frolicsome always, has become gentle and harmless, smitten into shame by he pure presence of our women and the sweet confiding smiles of our children. ”

“ Encouraged by those first successes, I endeavoured to regulate in the same manner the different motions of my person. Did I feel any chagrin, I endeavoured to put on an air of serenity, and even an affected cheerfulness; carried my zeal so far, that I used to put myself to voluntary pain; and tried my temper, by seeming to express a satisfaction; laboured with the same care and trouble to repress the sudden tumult of unexpected joy. It is thus that I gained that ascendancy over my countenance which has so often astonished you. ”

“ One of the greatest blessings of any occupation, is this little leisure it gives for reflection and regret. Repentance is good, and when the mind stops there, leaving the past to bury its dead, great results follow. ”

“ Then came a change,—a year or two with a crippled wing—life, though not abjectly wretched, on the whole a burden, and then the end. You can easily conceive—you can ardently desire—a better lot, but judge fairly the lights and shades of what has been. Does not the happiness on the whole exceed the evil? ”

“ I am, also, supported by the retrospect of my conduct; with all its mistakes, and all its extravagances, it has been that of a virtuous, ingenuous, uncorrupted, mind. You have contemned a heart of no common value, you have sported with its exquisite sensibilities—but it will, still, know how to separate your virtues from your errors. ”

“ Go, seek out some safe and solitary dwelling, where, by humble repentance, you may seek to propitiate an offended God! You are free! Go and repent; the Lord is merciful, and his ears are ever open to such as truly repent."
"Blind! quite blind!" repeated the Schoolmaster, mechanically grasping the pocketbook.
"Open the doors,—let him depart!" said Rodolph.
"Blind! blind!" repeated the bewildered and discomfited ruffian.
"You are free; you have the means of providing for yourself; begone!" ”

“ When the Virtue of Rectitude is fully practised, acquired, and comprehended, so that all temptation to untruthfulness and insincerity has ceased, then is the heart made purer and nobler, then is character strengthened, and knowledge enlarged, and life takes on a new meaning and a new power. ”

“ When the present feeling of resentment has passed away, when passion has cooled, and reason returned, there will arise some Allison, or some Macaulay, or some Lecky, to trace for our indignant posterity the story of this hour. ”

“ Your opinions are thus all-important, your physical conduct is largely a matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to heaven only through repentance, and the initial [Pg 155] step toward repentance is to do something to repent of. ”

“ To a frame of mind naturally strong and contemplative, but rendered by extraordinary events sceptical and intensely thoughtful, he unites an undeviating love of rectitude, a disposition of the gentlest [393] kind, feelings the most delicate and pure, and a sensibility painfully alive to the smallest deviation from virtue or propriety of conduct. ”

“ At times he found himself half cynically content with his lot. At others, a yearning rose within him like a great pain to be able to look the world in the face without shrinking from its condemnation. ”

“ Not 'cause he's troubled, but 'tis sweet to see Those Cares and Fears, from which ourselves are free. Creech.
If we are in Affliction, the Representation of the like Miseries makes our own more supportable. In both these Cases, the Pleasure arises from the Comparison, a Principle to which great Part of the Misery and Felicity of human Life is owing. It is commonly said, that no Body is miserable but by Comparison; and it may be as truly said, that no Body is happy but by Comparison. ”

“ To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright, unremorseful life, to cultivate the [Pg 335] power of governing by the will the current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a little to the unhappiness of many lives. ”

“ If it be the result of repentance, you are a signal example of the mercy of Heaven; if it be from natural goodness of heart, you are at any rate possessed of an excellent basis of character, which leads me to hope that we shall not be under the necessity of keeping you here very long in order to reclaim you to a virtuous and exemplary life. ”

“ If to any of my readers I may appear here to have taken a very despondent view of this whole affair, let him only call to mind my invariable ill luck in such matters, and how always it had been my lot to see myself on the fair road to success, only up to that point at which it is certain, besides—but why explain? These are my confessions. I may not alter what are matters of fact, and my reader must only take me with all the imperfections of wrong motives and headlong impulses upon my head, or abandon me at once. ”

“ The consciousness of the resentment that others will feel if he does evil, the instinctive application to himself of a trace of the resentment he would feel toward him or toward these fellow tribesmen of is-such complex states of mind complicate his mental processes and help check his primary instincts. ”

“ In company people take every opportunity to talk of repentance, penance, devotion and redemption, and profane, according to my feeling, what is sacred, forgetting that it has a resemblance to love, the feelings and confessions of which the true lover will be unwilling to expose to a stranger's ear. ”

“ Man argues ever from particular to general, instinctively flying to the illogic on which the acceptance of human life is based. To Risca, at nine and twenty, his pain translated itself into terms of the world-pain; and so will it happen to all generations of all the sons and daughters of men. ”

“ Now it is extremely questionable, whether some of the most monstrous forms of sensuality which it is scarcely possible to name, cause as much unhappiness as some infirmities of temper, or procrastination or hastiness of judgment. It is scarcely doubtful that a modest, diffident, and retiring nature, distrustful of its own abilities, and shrinking with humility from conflict, produces on the whole less benefit to the world than the self-assertion of an audacious and arrogant nature, which is impelled to every struggle, and developes [pg 041] every capacity. ”