mated by the same instincts, do not combine even against a butterfly; each seeks his own special advantage and not that of the community at large.

XV.

Responsible people, whose misfortune it is to have lived under unstable and revolutionary governments, are apt to acquire a profound sense of the perils of public life and of every sort of political prominence. It is not strange, therefore, that the prudence of cultivating obscurity should become proverbial with them. The Haytians have this lessson preserved in many forms. Here are

two:

CABRITE QUI PAS MALIN MANGÉ NEN PIE MORNE. The wild goat is not cunning that eats at the foot of the mountain.

That is, near the thoroughfares and settlements of men.

XVI.

COULEUVRE QUI VLÉ VIVRE LI PAS PROMENER

DANS GRAND CHEMIN.

The snake that wishes to live does not travel on the highway. Ovid, who often wrote more wisely than he acted, has less effectively presented the same idea in a line written during his banishment. Crede mihi, bene qui latuit bene vixit.1

So we say, Far from court far from care. The poet Tibullus went so far as to recommend us to keep our joys from the world: Qui sapit, in tacito gaudeat ille sinu.

Seneca thus expands the same idea in almost the same words:

Sic vero invidiam effugies, si te non ingesseris oculis, si bona tua non jactaveris, si scieris in sinu gaudere.2

Qui struit in callem, multos habet ille magis

1 A life retired

Is well inspired.

'If you would escape envy, keep out of sight, do not boast of your possessions, and taste your joys in private.

tros,' is a popular Latin form of the same aphorism, which the Germans have adopted with a slight improvement:

Wer will bauen an die Strassen

Muss die Leute reden lassen.2

The goat and the serpent in the Haytian proverbs may be taken to represent the widely opposite motives which actuate different persons in cultivating obscurity. One and the noblest, of which the goat may be taken as a symbol, is a just indifference to public honors and applause; a fear of their distractions or of their corrupting influence upon the heart and character; a modest sense of our ability to fill positions of responsibility.

It is to one of this class La Bruyère refers in one of his most profound reflections:

"Celui qui un beau jour sait renoncer fermement ou à un grand nom, ou à une grande autorité, ou à une grande fortune, se délivre en un

'He who buildeth in the street.
Many masters hath to meet.

'Who will build upon the walk

Needs must let the people talk.

moment de bien des peines de bien des veilles, et quelquefois de bien des crimes."

The baser sort, symbolized here by the serpent, is a selfish unwillingness to give our time to the public service, a cowardly fear of the peril to our lives, fortunes, personal consideration or personal comfort, or because of its interference with other plans for our personal profit or aggrandizement. The friendship of such is more to be feared than favored. This class is gently rebuked by Shakespeare in the first act of Measure for Measure:

"Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste

Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not.

But to find issues."

Spirits are not finely touch'd,

The man who voluntarily puts himself in

1 He who has the wit betimes firmly to renounce either a famous name, or great power, or a large fortune, frees himself in a moment from many troubles, from many anxieties, and sometimes even from many crimes.De la Cour.

the position to awaken the envy of his fellow creatures may be suspected of placing too high a value upon the objects of their envy.

It is a wonderful fact, of which every day of our lives might furnish many illustrations, and one worthy of much meditation, that our virtues and spiritual graces, which are incomparably the greatest treasures and dignities of which we can become possessed, are never objects of envy. We may pasture those on the high-road, at the foot of the mountain, or where we please. People try to deprive us of them sometimes, but never because they desire to appropriate them, nor can they ever succeed without our consent.

As we never envy another his spiritual riches, so we never repent of what we do with a single eye to the laying up of such riches for ourselves. In that sense what a field is here left for the exercise of all the best faculties of our nature in acquiring priceless treasures, the highest dignities,