The Pic Nic Papers Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 85 ORSON DABBS, THE HITTITE. It has been said, and truly, that it takes all sorts of people to make a world. He who complains of the lights and shades of c... more »haracter which are eternally flitting before him, and of the diversity of opposing interests which at times cross his path, has but an illiberal, contracted view of the subject; and though the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in his retirement at Estremadura, had some reason for being a little annoyed when he could not cause two or three score of watches to go together, yet he was wrong in sighing over his previous ineffectual efforts to make men think alike. It is, to speak figuratively, the clashing which constitutes the music. The harmony of the whole movement is produced by the fusion into each other of an infinite variety of petty discords ; as a glass of punch depends for its excellences upon the skilful commingling of opposing flavours and antagonizing materials. Were the passengers in a wherry to be of one mind, they would probably all sit upon the same side, and hence, naturally, pay a visit to the Davy Jones of the river; and if all the men of a nation thought alike, it is perfectly evident that the ship of state must lose her trim. The system of checks and balances pervades both the moral and the physical world, and without it, affairs would soon hasten to their end. It is, therefore, clear that we must have all sorts of people,—some to prevent stagnation, and others to act as ballast to an excess of animation. The steam-engines of humanity must have their breaks and their safety valves, and the dead weights of society require the whip and the spur. Orson Dabbs, certainly, is entitled to a place among the stimulants of the world, and it is probable that in exercising his impulses he produces beneficial effects. ...« less