He Knew It All | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 7, 1882

He Knew It All.

HE always did. No one could ever teach him anything. The first words he lisped when a baby were, "Oh yes! I know." The first words he will speak when ushered into the Presence where the eternal glories are revealed, will be, "Yes! yes! I understand." He never opened his eyes with wonder. He never asked troublesome questions. When a boy, neither father nor mother could teach him anything. He would rather any day pound his fingers than suffer his father to tell him how to drive a nail. He could milk a cow better than the hired man, and was not in the least disconcerted that the udders gave not a drop of milk; it was obstinate Polly's fault; "never saw such a cow." His mother in vain endeavored to teach him something about dress. He wore the loudest of neckties, and, as soon as he had liberty of purchase, the most extraordinarily patterned pantaloons, and laughed at the "old woman's" notions. His mother was always the "old woman," his father always an "old fogy."

At last they sent him to a boarding-school. The father said, hopefully, "School will knock some of the conceit out of him." But the father either had not read or had not heeded Solomon's wise saying, "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." Poor Solomon evidently had sorrowful experience with men who knew it all. The school was the mortar, and the teacher and all the boys were pestles; but not even continued pounding did any good. The boy knew how to hold his pen better than the writing-master, and how to manage his voice better than the singing-master, and how to translate better than the Latin teacher, and how to bat and catch better than the ball-captain, and how to handle his knife and fork better than the motherly matron who made table habits her special care. The boys called him, ironically, "the boss." He took it as a compliment, and it added an inch to his height. At the end of the year he came back from school with a bigger stock of assurance than he had when he went there. His genius for conceit was amazing, admirable.

He went to college. He was at first a little taken aback that he had a dozen conditions to work out in the summer vacation; and for once in his life he really did work hard, for he was ashamed to fail of entrance. But he attributed his conditions wholly to the stupidity of the professors; and after he got in he faithfully fulfilled one-half of one of Paul's exhortations: he diligently forgot those things that were behind. No secret society would have him; he assured himself and his friends that he would have no secret society. The prayer-meeting could not shut him out, and he attended regularly and spoke always. He flunked with greater grace and ease than any fellow in the class, and said "not prepared" with as smiling self-assurance as if he had made the best recitation of the day. He did not get on the base-ball nine, owing to the prejudice of the captain, nor take an oratorical prize, though no one could deny that he was self-possessed on the stage. He ought to have been valedictorian; but he did not even get a part. He saved his diploma by the skin of his teeth, and carried himself so loftily on graduating day that some sub-freshmen, who had come up to see how the college looked, thought he must be President of the Faculty.

He went into business. His father had some influence and got him a place as clerk in a wholesale dry-goods house. He did not know cotton, woolen, and linen apart, nor a ledger from a journal; but he was a graduate of ——— University, and from his pinnacle of lofty eminence he looked down with a serene and lofty self-complacency upon the members of the entire establishment, from the principal to the errand boy. He came late and went away early; and always wore irreproachable kid gloves, and carried a delicate little cane. He talked of "our house" so largely in evening gatherings that the girls supposed him to be a partner, and even practical men, after they had made large discounts, still estimated him at one hundred per cent more than his real valuation. He married, of course; and his wife thinks that loyalty to her husband requires that she should think of him as highly as he thinks of himself. She tries faithfully to be loyal; but she is a sensible woman, and it is very hard work. He is now a man in middle life. He has shifted from place to place a dozen times, and has gone down a step or two at every shift. He now stands at the door of a retail store in Broadway and bows the customers in. He performs this service with such a lovely air that country shoppers suppose him to be the proprietor, and always address him by the name upon the sign. He acknowledges the compliment with a gracious smile, but in truth counts it no compliment at all. He assures his wife that if he and the head of the house could only change places he would make things buzz; for he knows a thing or two, and the head of the house is a fool. But he still wears the irreproachable kids, and walks to church on Sunday morning with his wife, who has earned her own dress by furtive services for a compassionate uncle, with such a lordly air that the sexton pays him as much deference as though he were a millionaire, and every Sunday afternoon puzzles his head anew over the insoluble problem why so rich a gentleman should take a pew in the gallery instead of the center aisle.

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of an idiot than of him." — Christian Union.